GIFT  or 


* 

4. 


THE   RURAL  LIFE   PROBLEM 

OF  THE 

UNITED  STATES 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO 
DALLAS   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


THE 
RURAL  LIFE  PROBLEM 


OF   THE 


UNITED  STATES 


NOTES   OF   AN   IRISH    OBSERVER 
SIR  HORACE  PLUNKETT 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1913 

AU  rights  reserved 


^ 


OOPYTtlftHT,   1910, 

BT  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  May,  igia 
Reprinted  October,  1910;  January,  1911  ;  October, 
1912  ;  September,  1913. 


Norfaooto  $re08 

J.  8.  CuBhing  Co.  —  Berwick  A  Smith  Oo. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PEEFATOEY  NOTE 

THE  thoughts  contained  in  the  following 
pages  relate  to  one  side  of  the  life  of  a 
country  which  has  been  to  me,  as  to  many 
Irishmen,  a  second  home.  They  are  offered 
in  friendly  recognition  of  kindness  I  cannot 
hope  to  repay,  received  largely  as  a  student 
of  American  social  and  economic  problems, 
from  public-spirited  Americans  who,  I  know, 
will  appreciate  most  highly  any  slight  ser- 
vice to  their  country. 

The  substance  of  the  book  appeared  in 
five  articles  contributed  to  the  New  York 
Outlook  under  the  title  "Conservation  and 
Rural  Life."  Several  American  friends, 
deeply  interested  in  the  Rural  Life  problem, 
asked  me  to  republish  the  series.  In  doing 
so,  I  have  felt  that  I  ought  to  present  a 
more  comprehensive  view  of  my  subject 
than  either  the  space  allowed  or  the  more 
casual  publication  demanded. 


vi  Prefatory  Note 

I  have  to  thank  the  editors  of  the  Outlook 
for  the  generous  hospitality  of  their  columns, 
and  for  full  freedom  to  republish  what  be- 
longs to  them. 

HORACE  PLUNKETT. 

THE  PLUNKETT  HOUSE,  DUBLIN, 
April,  1910. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  SUBJECT  AND  THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 

FAOB 

The  subject  defined  —  A  reconstruction  of  rural  life 
in  English-speaking  communities  essential  to 
the  progress  of  Western  civilisation  —  A  move- 
ment for  a  new  rural  civilisation  to  be  proposed 

—  The  author's  point  of  view  derived  from 
thirty  years  of  Irish  and  American  experience 

—  The  physical    contrast  and    moral    resem- 
blances in  the  Irish  and  American  rural  prob- 
lems—  Mr.  Roosevelt's  interest  in  this  aspect 
of  the  question  —  His  Conservation  and  Coun- 
try Life  policies 1 

CHAPTER  H 
THE  LAUNCHING  OF  Two  ROOSEVELT  POLICIES 

The  sane  emotionalism  of  American  public  opinion 

—  Gifford  Pinchot  as  the  Apostle  of  Conserva- 
tion —  His  test   of   national   efficiency  —  Mr. 
James  J.  Hill's  notable  pronouncements  upon 
the  wastage  of  natural  resources  —  The  evolu- 
tion of  the  Conservation  policy  —  Historical  and 
present  causes  of  national  extravagance  —  The 
Conference  of  Governors  and  their  pronounce- 
ment upon    Conservation  —  Mr.    Roosevelt's 

vii 


viii  Table  of  Contents 

PAGI 

Country  Life  policy — His  estimate  of  the  last- 
ing importance  of  the  Conservation  and  Country 
Life  ideas — The  popularity  of  the  Conservation 
policy  and  the  lack  of  interest  in  the  Country 
Life  policy  —  The  Country  Life  Commission's 
inquiries  and  the  reality  of  the  problem  —  The 
need  and  opportunity  for  reconstruction  of  rural 
life 17 

CHAPTER  m 

THE  ORIGIN  AND  CONSEQUENCES  OF  RURAL 
NEGLECT 

The  origin  of  rural  neglect  in  English-speaking 
countries  traced  to  the  Industrial  Revolution  in 

9  England  —  Effect  of  modern  economic  changes 
upon  the  mutual  relations  of  town  and  country 
populations  —  Respects  in  which  the  old  rela- 
tions ought  to  be  restored  —  Three  economic 
reasons  for  the  study  of  rural  conditions  —  The 
social  consequences  of  rural  neglect  —  The  po- 
litical importance  of  rustic  experience  to  reen- 
force  urban  intelligence  in  modern  democracies 
—  The  analogue  of  the  European  exodus  in  the 
United  States  —  The  moral  aspects  of  rural 
neglect  —  The  danger  to  national  efficiency  of 
sacrificing  agricultural  to  commercial  and  in- 
dustrial interests  —  The  happy  circumstance 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  interest  in  rural  well-being  35 

CHAPTER  IV 
THE  INNER  LIFE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  FARMER 

Reasons  why  the  rural  problem  resulting  from 
urban  predominance  exists  only  in  English- 


Table  of  Contents  ix 

PAQB 

speaking  countries  —  Neglect  of  farmer  more 
easily  excused  in  the  United  States  than  else- 
where owing  to  his  apparent  prosperity  — 
Country  Life  Commission's  pronouncement  on 
rural  backwardness  —  Why  the  matter  must  be 
taken  up  by  the  towns —  A  survey  of  American 
rural  life  —  The  problem  economically  and  so- 
ciologically considered  in  the  Middle  West  — 
Causes  and  character  of  rural  backwardness  in 
the  Southern  States  —  The  boll-weevil  and  the 
hookworm  as  illustrations  of  unconcern  for 
the  well-being  of  rural  communities  —  The 
problem  in  the  New  England  States  not  typi- 
cally American  —  The  progressive  attitude  of 
some  communities  in  the  Far  West  in  rural 
reform 57 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  WEAK  SPOT  IN  AMERICAN  RURAL  ECONOMY 

The  three  elements  of  a  rural  existence  — Mr.  Roose- 
velt's formula:  "Better  farming,  better  busi- 
ness, better  living"  —  A  comparative  analysis 
of  urban  and  rural  business  methods  shows  that 
herein  lies  chief  cause  of  rural  backwardness 
—  Reasons  why  farmers  fail  to  adopt  methods 
of  combination  —  A  description  of  the  coopera- 
tive system  in  its  application  to  agriculture  — 
The  introduction  and  development  of  agri- 
cultural cooperation  in  Ireland — The  Raiffeisen 
Credit  Association  successful  in  poorest  Irish 
districts  —  Summary  of  cooperative  achieve- 
ment by  Irish  farmers  —  British  imitation  of 
Irish  agricultural  organising  methods  —  A 


Table  of  Contents 

PAGK 

criticism  of  American  farmers' organisations  — 
Lack  of  combination  for  business  purposes  the 
cause  of  political  impotence  —  Urgent  need  for 
a  reorganisation  of  American  agriculture  upon 
cooperative  lines 83 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  WAY  TO  BETTER  FARMING  AND  BETTEB 
LIVING 

The  retarded  application  of  science  to  agriculture 
and  neglect  of  agricultural  education  —  Present 
progress  in  agricultural  education  —  Full  bene- 
fit of  education  must  await  cooperative  organi- 
sation—  Connection  between  cooperation  and 
social  progress  —  Mr.  Roosevelt  on  the  cause 
and  cure  of  rural  discontent  —  Two  views  upon 
the  principles  of  rural  betterment  —  The  part 
cooperation  is  playing  in  Irish  rural  society  — 
General  observations  on  town  and  country 
pleasures  —  The  social  necessity  for  a  redirec- 
tion of  rural  education  —  The  rural  labour 
problem — The  position  of  women  in  farm  life 

—  The  reason  why  the  remedy  for  rural  back- 
wardness must  come  from  without  —  The  para- 
dox of  the  problem 117 

CHAPTER  VH 
THE  Two  THINGS  NEEDFUL 

Summary  of  diagnosis  and  indication  of  treatment 

—  Chief  aim  the  coordination  of  agencies  avail- 
able for  social  work  in  the  country  —  Numerical 


Tabk  of  Contents 


strength  and  fine  social  spirit  abroad,  but  leader- 
ship needed  —  Mutual  interest  of  advocates  of 
Conservation  and  of  rural  reform  —  The  psycho- 
logical difficulty  due  to  predominance  of  urban 
idea  —  Roman  history  repeating  itself  in  New 
York  —  The  natural  leaders  of  the  Country 
Life  movement  to  be  found  in  the  cities  —  The 
objects  of  the  movement  defined  —  Two  new 
institutions  to  be  created;  the  one  executive 
and  organising,  the  other  academic  —  The  Na- 
tional Conservation  Association  qualified  to 
initiate  and  direct  the  movement  —  Possibly  an 
American  Agricultural  Organisation  Society 
should  be  founded  for  the  work  —  The  chief 
practical  work  the  introduction  of  agricultural 
cooperation  —  Necessity  for  joining  forces  with 
existing  philanthropic  agencies  —  Suggested 
enlistment  of  country  clergy  in  cooperative 
propagandism  —  The  Country  Life  Institute, 
its  purpose  and  functions  —  Reason  why  one 
body  cannot  undertake  work  assigned  to  the 
two  new  institutions  —  The  financial  require- 
ments of  the  Institute  —  Summary  and  con- 
clusions .......  .  145 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  SUBJECT  AND  THE  POINT  OF 
VIEW 


THE  RURAL  LIFE  PROBLEM 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   SUBJECT  AND  THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 

I  SUBMIT  in  the  following  pages  a  proposi- 
tion and  a  proposal  —  a  distinction  which 
an  old-country  writer  of  English  may,  per- 
haps, be  permitted  to  preserve.    The  propo- 
sition is  that,  in  the  United  States,  as  in  other 
A  English-speaking  communities,  the  city  has 
^7  been  developed  to  the  neglect  of  the  country. 
/    I  shall  not  have  to  labour  the  argument,  as 
nobody  seriously  disputes  the  contention; 
but  I  shall  trace  the  main  causes  of  the  neg- 
lect, and  indicate  what,  in  my  view,  must  be 
its  inevitable  consequences.    If  I  make  my 
case,  it  will  appear  that  our  civilisation  has 
thus    become    dangerously    one-sided,    and 
that,  in  the  interests  of  national  well-being, 

3 


The  Rural  Life  Problem 


it  is  high  time  for  steps  to  be  taken  to  coun- 
teract the  townward  tendency. 

My  definite  proposal  to  those  who  accept 
these  conclusions  is  that  a  Country  Life 
movement,  upon  lines  which  will  be  laid 
down,  should  be  initiated  by  existing  associa- 
tions, whose  efforts  should  be  supplemented 
by  a  new  organisation  which  I  shall  call  a 

T 

Country  Life  Institute.  There  are  in  the 
United  States  a  multiplicity  of  agencies,  both 
public  and  voluntary,  available  for  this  work. 
But  the  army  of  workers  in  this  field  of  social 
service  needs  two  things:  first,  some  defi- 
nite plan  for  coordinating  their  several  ac- 
tivities, and,  next,  some  recognised  source 
of  information  collected  from  the  experience 
of  the  Old  and  the  New  World.  It  is  the 
purpose  of  these  pages  to  show  that  these 
needs  are  real  and  can  be  met. 

Two  obvious  questions  will  here  suggest 
themselves.  Why  should  the  United  States 
—  of  all  countries  in  the  world  —  be  chosen 
for  such  a  theme  instead  of  a  country  like 


The  Subject  and  the  Point  of  View       5 

Ireland,  where  the  population  depends  mainly 
upon  agriculture?  What  qualifications  has 
an  Irishman,  be  he  never  so  competent  to 
advise  upon  the  social  and  economic  prob- 
lems of  his  own  country,  to  talk  to  Americans 
about  the  life  of  their  rural  population?  I 
admit  at  once  that,  while  I  have  made  some 
study  of  American  agriculture  and  rural 
economy,  my  actual  work  upon  the  problem 
of  which  I  write  has  been  restricted  to  Ireland. 
But  I  claim,  with  some  pride,  that,  in  thought 
upon  rural  economy,  Ireland  is  ahead  of  any 
English-speaking  country.  She  has  troubles 
of  her  own,  some  inherent  in  the  adverse 
physical  conditions,  and  others  due  to  well- 
known  historical  causes,  that  too  often  impede 
the  action  to  which  her  best  thoughts  should 
lead.  But  the  very  fact  that  those  who 
grapple  with  Irish  problems  have  to  work 
through  failure  to  success  will  certainly  not 
lessen  the  value  to  the  social  student  of  the 
experience  gained.  I  recognise,  however, 
that  I  must  give  the  reader  so  much  of 


6  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

personal  narrative  as  is  required  to  enable 
him  to  estimate  the  value  of  my  facts,  and 
of  the  conclusions  which  I  base  upon  them. 
To  have  enjoyed  an  Irish- American  exist- 
ence, to  have  been  profoundly  interested  in, 
and  more  or  less  in  touch  with,  public  affairs 
in  both  countries,  to  have  been  an  unwilling 
politician  in  Ireland  and  not  a  politician 
at  all  in  America,  is,  to  say  the  least,  an 
unusual  experience  for  an  Irishman.  But 
such  has  been  my  record  during  the  last 
twenty  years.  Soon  after  graduating  at  Ox- 
ford, I  was  advised  to  live  in  mountain  air 
for  a  while,  and  for  the  next  decade  I  was  a 
ranchman  along  the  foothills  of  the  Rockies. 
To  those  who  knew  that  my  heart  was  in 
Ireland,  I  used  to  explain  that  I  might  some 
day  be  in  politics  at  home,  and  must  take 
care  of  my  lungs.  In  1889  I  returned  to 
live  and  work  in  my  own  country,  but  I 
retained  business  interests,  including  some 
farming  operations,  in  the  Western  States. 
Ever  since  then  I  have  taken  my  annual 


The  Subject  and  the  Point  of  View       7 

holiday  across  the  Atlantic,  and  have  studied 
rural  conditions  over  a  wider  area  in  the 
United  States  than  my  business  interests 
demanded. 

For  eight  years,  commencing  in  1892,  I 
was  a  Member  of  Parliament.  My  legis- 
lative ambition  was  to  get  something  done 
for  Irish  industry,  and  especially  Irish  agri- 
culture. Having  secured  the  assistance  of 
an  unprecedented  combination  of  repre- 
sentative Irishmen,  known  as  the  Recess 
Committee  (because  it  sat  during  the  Parlia- 
mentary recess),  we  succeeded  in  getting  the 
addition  we  wanted  to  the  machinery  of 
Irish  Government.  The  functions  of  the 
new  institution  are  sufficiently  indicated 
by  its  cumbrous  Parliamentary  title,  "The 
Department  of  Agriculture  and  other  In- 
dustries and  for  Technical  Instruction  for 
Ireland."  I  mention  this  official  experience 
because  it  not  only  intensified  my  desire 
to  study  American  conditions,  but  it  also 
brought  me  frequently  to  Washington  to 


8  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

study  the  working  of  those  Federal  institu- 
tions which  are  concerned  for  the  welfare 
of  the  rural  population.  There  I  enjoyed 
the  unfailing  courtesy  of  American  public 
servants  to  the  foreign  inquirer. 

On  one  of  these  visits,  in  the  winter  of 
1905-1906, 1  called  upon  President  Roosevelt 
to  pay  him  my  respects,  and  to  express  to 
him  my  obligations  to  some  members  of  his 
Administration.  I  wished  especially  to  ac- 
knowledge my  indebtedness  to  that  veteran 
statesman,  Secretary  Wilson,  the  value  of 
whose  long  service  to  the  American  farmer 
it  would  be  hard  to  exaggerate.  Mr.  Roose- 
velt questioned  me  as  to  the  exact  object 
of  my  inquiries,  and  asked  me  to  come  again 
and  discuss  with  him  more  fully  than  was 
possible  at  the  moment  certain  economic 
and  social  questions  which  had  engaged 
much  of  his  own  thoughts.  He  was  greatly 
interested  to  learn  that  in  Ireland  we  have 
been  approaching  many  of  these  questions 
from  his  own  point  of  view.  He  made  me 


The  Subject  and  the  Point  of  View       9 

tell  him  the  story  of  Irish  land  legislation, 
and  of  recent  Irish  movements  for  the  im- 
provement of  agricultural  conditions.  Ever 
since,  his  interest  in  these  Irish  questions  — 
to  the  Irish  Question  we  gave  a  wide  berth  — 
has  been  maintained  on  account  of  their 
bearing  upon  his  Rural  Life  policy,  for  I  had 
shown  him  how  the  economic  strengthening 
and  social  elevation  of  the  Irish  farmer  had 
become  a  matter  of  urgent  Irish  concern. 
I  recall  many  things  he  said  on  that  occasion, 
which  show  that  his  two  great  policies  of 
Conservation  and  Country  Life  reform  were 
maturing  in  his  mind.  I  need  hardly  say 
how  deeply  interesting  these  policies  are  to 
me,  embracing  as  they  do  economic  and 
social  problems,  the  working  out  of  which 
in  my  own  country  happens  to  be  the  task  to 
which  I  have  devoted  the  best  years  of  my 
life. 

I  must  now  offer  to  the  reader  so  much 
of  the  story  of  the  Country  Life  movement 
in  my  own  country  as  will  enable  him  to 


10  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

understand  its  interest  to  Mr.  Roosevelt 
and  to  many  another  worker  upon  the  an- 
alogous problems  of  the  United  States. 
Ireland  is  passing  through  an  agrarian  revo- 
lution. There,  as  in  many  other  European 
countries,  the  title  to  most  of  the  agricultural 
land  rested  upon  conquest.  The  English 
attempt  to  colonise  Ireland  never  completely 
succeeded  nor  completely  failed;  conse- 
quently the  Irish  never  ceased  to  repudiate 
the  title  of  the  alien  landlord.  In  1881  Mr. 
Gladstone  introduced  one  of  the  greatest 
agrarian  reforms  in  history  —  rent-fixing  by 
judicial  authority  —  which  was  certainly  a 
bold  attempt  to  put  an  end  to  a  desolating 
conflict,  centuries  old. 

The  scheme  failed,  —  whether,  as  some 
hold,  from  its  inherent  defects,  or  from  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  time,  is  an  open  question. 
It  is  but  fair  to  its  author  to  point  out  that 
a  rapidly  increasing  foreign  competition, 
chiefly  from  the  newly  opened  tracts  of 
virgin  soil  in  the  New  World,  led  to  a  fall 


The  Subject  and  the  Point  of  View     11 

in  agricultural  prices,  which  made  the  first 
rents  fixed  appear  too  high.  Quicker  and 
cheaper  transit,  together  with  processes  for 
keeping  produce  fresh  over  the  longest  routes, 
soon  showed  that]  the  new  market  conditions 
had  come  to  stay.  A  bad  land  system  on 
a  rising  market  might  succeed  better  than 
a  good  one  on  a  falling.  The  land  tenure 
reforms  begun  in  1881,  having  broken  down 
under  stress  of  foreign  competition,  and 
Purchase  Acts  on  a  smaller  scale  having 
been  tentatively  tried  in  the  interval,  in  1903 
Parliament  finally  decreed  that  sufficient 
money  should  be  provided  to  buy  out  all  the 
remaining  agricultural  land.  In  a  not  remote 
future,  some  two  hundred  million  pounds 
sterling  —  a  billion  dollars  —  will  have  been 
advanced  by  the  British  Government  to 
enable  the  tenants  to  purchase  their  holdings, 
the  money  to  be  repaid  in  easy  instalments 
during  periods  averaging  over  sixty  years. 

Twenty  years  ago  this  general  course  of 
events  was  foreseen,  and  a  few  Irishmen  con- 


12  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

ceived  and  set  to  work  upon  what  has  come 
to  be  Ireland's  Rural  Life  policy.  The  posi- 
tion taken  up  was  simple.  What  Parliament 
was  about  to  do  would  pull  down  the  whole 
structure  of  Ireland's  agricultural  economy, 
and  would  clear  away  the  chief  hindrance 
to  economic  and  social  progress.  But  upon 
the  ground  thus  cleared  the  edifice  of  a 
new  rural  social  economy  would  have  to 
be  built.  This  work,  although  it  needs  the 
fostering  care  of  government,  and  liberal 
facilities  for  a  system  of  education  inti- 
mately related  to  the  people's  working 
lives,  belongs  mainly  to  the  sphere  of  vol- 
untary effort. 

The  new  movement,  which  was  started  in 
1889  to  meet  the  circumstances  I  have  in- 
dicated, was  thus  a  movement  for  the  up- 
building of  country  life.  It  anticipated 
the  lines  of  the  formula  which  Mr.  Roosevelt 
adopted  in  his  Message  transmitting  to  Con- 
gress the  Report  of  the  Country  Life  Com- 
mission—  better  farming,  better  business, 


The  Subject  and  the  Point  of  View     13 

better  living :  we  began  with  better  business, 
which  consisted  in  the  introduction  of  agri- 
cultural cooperation  into  the  farming  in- 
dustry, for  several  reasons  which  will  appear 
later,  and  for  one  which  I  must  mention  here. 
We  found  that  we  could  not  develop  hi  un- 
organised farmers  a  political  influence  strong 
enough  to  enable  them  to  get  the  Govern- 
ment to  do  its  part  towards  better  farming. 
Owing  to  the  new  agricultural  opinion  which 
had  been  developed  indirectly  by  organising 
the  farmer,  we  were  able  to  win  from  Parlia- 
ment the  department  I  have  named  above. 
This  institution  was  so  framed  and  endowed 
that  it  is  able  to  give  to  the  Irish  farmers 
all  the  assistance  which  can  be  legitimately 
given  by  public  agencies  and  at  public  ex- 
pense. The  assistance  consists  chiefly  of 
education.  But  education  is  interpreted  in 
the  widest  sense.  Practical  instruction  to 
old  and  young,  in  schools,  upon  the  farms, 
and  at  meetings,  lectures,  experiments,  and 
demonstrations,  the  circulation  of  useful 


14  The  Rural  Life  Problem] 

information  and  advice,  and  all  the  usual 
methods  known  to  progressive  governments, 
are  being  introduced  with  the  chief  aim  of 
enabling  the  farmer  to  apply  to  the  practice 
of  farming  the  teachings  of  modern  science. 
Better  living,  which  includes  making  country 
life  more  interesting  and  attractive,  is  sought 
by  using  voluntary  associations,  some  or- 
ganised primarily  for  business  purposes,  and 
others,  having  no  business  aim,  for  social 
and  intellectual  ends.  But  Irish  rural  re- 
formers are  agreed  that  by  far  the  most  im- 
portant step  towards  a  higher  and  a  better 
rural  life  would  be  a  redirection  of  education 
in  the  country  schools.  To  this  I  shall  return 
in  the  proper  place. 

I  can  now  proceed  with  my  American 
experiences  without  leaving  any  doubt  as  to 
the  point  of  view  from  which  I  approach  the 
problem  of  rural  life  in  the  United  States. 
Having  engaged  in  actual  work  upon  that 
problem  in  Ireland,  where  a  combination  of 
economic  changes  and  political  events  has 


The  Subject  and  the  Point  of  View     15 

made  its  solution  imperative,  and  having 
been  long  in  personal  touch  with  rural  con- 
ditions in  some  Western  States,  my  interest 
in  certain  policies  which  were  maturing  at 
Washington  may  be  easily  surmised.  There 
I  found  that,  with  wholly  different  conditions 
to  be  dealt  with,  the  thoughts  of  the  Presi- 
dent and  of  others  in  his  confidence  were, 
as  regards  the  main  issue,  moving  in  the  same 
direction  as  my  own.  They  too  had  come 
to  feel  that  the  welfare  of  the  rural  popula- 
tion had  been  too  long  neglected,  and  that 
it  was  high  time  to  consider  how  the  neglect 
might  be  repaired.  In  his  annual  message 
to  Congress  in  1904,  Mr.  Roosevelt  had  made 
it  clear  that  he  was  fully  conscious  of  this 
necessity.  "Nearly  half  of  the  people  of 
this  country,"  he  wrote,  "  devote  their 
energies  to  growing  things  from  the  soil. 
Until  a  recent  date  little  has  been  done  to 
prepare  these  millions  for  their  life  work." 
I  did  not  realise  at  the  time  the  full  import 
of  these  sentences.  Nor  did  I  foresee  that 


16  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

the  problem  of  rural  life  was  to  be  forced  to 
the  front  by  the  awakening  of  public  opinion, 
upon  another  issue  differing  from  and  yet 
closely  related  to  the  subject  of  these 
pages.  Mr.  Roosevelt  was  thinking  out 
the  Conservation  idea,  which  I  believe  will 
some  day  be  recognised  as  the  greatest  of 
his  policies. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  LAUNCHING    OF   TWO   ROOSEVELT 
POLICIES 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  LAUNCHING  OF  TWO  ROOSEVELT  POLICIES 

ALTHOUGH  somebody  has  already  said 
something  like  it,  I  would  say  there  is  a  tide 
in  the  thoughts  of  men  which,  taken  at  the 
flood,  leads  on  to  action.  We  make  the 
general  claim  for  our  Western  civilisation, 
that,  whatever  the  form  of  government,  once 
public  opinion  is  thoroughly  stirred  upon  a 
great  and  vital  issue,  it  is  but  a  question  of 
time  for  the  will  to  find  the  way.  But  in 
the  life  of  the  United  States,  the  passage  from 
thought  to  action  is  more  rapid  than  in  any 
country  that  I  know.  Nowhere  do  we  find 
such  a  combination  of  emotionalism  with 
sanity.  No  better  illustration  of  these  na- 
tional qualities  could  be  desired  than  that 
afforded  by  the  inception  and  early  growth 
of  the  Conservation  policy. 
19 


20  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

I  have  already  shown  how  my  inquiries 
at  Washington  gave  me  access  to  the  most 
accessible  of  the  world's  statesmen.  At 
the  same  time  there  came  into  my  life  an- 
other remarkable  personality.  To  the  United 
States  Forester  of  that  day  I  owe  my 
earliest  interest  in  the  Conservation  policy. 
In  counsel  with  him  I  came  to  regard  the 
Conservation  and  Rural  Life  policies  as  one 
organic  whole.  So  I  must  say  here  a  word 
about  the  man  who,  more  than  any  other, 
has  inspired  whatever  in  these  pages  may  be 
worth  printing. 

I  first  met  Gifford  Pinchot  in  his  office  in 
Washington  in  1905.  I  was  not  especially 
interested  in  forestry,  but  the  Forester  was 
so  interesting  that  I  listened  with  increasing 
delight  to  the  story  of  his  work.  I  noticed 
that  as  an  administrator  he  had  a  grasp  of 
detail  and  a  mastery  of  method  which  are 
not  usually  found  in  men  who  have  had  no 
training  in  large  business  affairs.  I  thought 
the  secret  of  his  success  lay  between  love 


The  Launching  of  Two  Policies        21 

of  work  and  sympathy  with  workers,  which 
gained  him  the  devotion  and  enthusiastic 
cooperation  of  his  staff.  It  is,  however,  as 
a  statesman  rather  than  as  an  administrator 
that  his  achievement  is  and  will  be  known. 

When  I  first  knew  the  Forester,  I  found 
that  already  the  conservation  of  timber  was 
but  a  small  part  of  his  material  aims :  every 
national  resource  must  be  husbanded.  But 
over  the  whole  scheme  of  Conservation  a 
great  moral  issue  reigned  supreme.  He 
clung  affectionately  to  his  task,  but  it  was 
not  to  him  mere  forestry  administration. 
In  his  far  vision  he  seemed  to  see  men  as 
trees  walking.  The  saving  of  one  great  asset 
was  broadening  out  into  insistence  upon  a 
new  test  of  national  efficiency:  the  people 
of  the  United  States  were  to  be  judged  by 
the  manner  in  which  they  applied  their 
physical  and  mental  energies  to  the  con- 
servation and  development  of  their  country's 
natural  resources.  The  acceptance  of  this 
test  would  mean  the  success  of  a  great  policy 


22  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

for  the  initiation  of  which  President  Roose- 
velt gave  almost  the  whole  credit  to  Gif- 
ford  Pinchot. 

There  is  one  other  name  which  will  be 
ever  honorably  associated  with  the  dawn 
of  the  Conservation  idea  which  Mr.  Roosevelt 
elevated  to  the  status  and  dignity  of  a  na- 
tional policy.  In  September,  1906,  Mr. 
James  J.  Hill  delivered  (under  the  title  of 
"The  Future  of  the  United  States ")  what 
I  think  was  an  epoch-making  address.  It 
is  significant  that  this  great  railway  presi- 
dent opened  his  campaign  for  the  economic 
salvation  of  the  United  States  by  addressing 
himself,  not  to  politicians  or  professors,  but  to 
a  representative  body  of  Minnesota  farmers. 
This  address  presented  for  the  first  time  in 
popular  form  a  remarkable  collection  of 
economic  facts,  which  formed  the  basis  of 
conclusions  as  startling  as  they  were  new. 
Let  me  attempt  a  brief  summary  of  its  con- 
tents. 

The  natural  resources,  to  which  the  Con- 


The  Launching  of  Two  Policies        23 

servation  policy  relates,  may  be  divided  into 
two  classes:  the  minerals,  which  when  used 
cannot  be  replaced,  and  things  that  grow 
from  the  soil,  which  admit  of  indefinitely 
augmented  reproduction.  At  the  head  of 
the  former  category  stands  the  supply  of 
coal  and  iron.  This  factor  in  the  nation's 
industry  and  commerce  was  being  exhausted 
at  a  rate  which  made  it  certain  that,  long 
before  the  end  of  the  century,  the  most  im- 
portant manufactures  would  be  handicapped 
by  a  higher  cost  of  production.  The  supply 
of  merchantable  timber  was  disappearing 
even  more  rapidly.  But  far  more  serious 
than  all  other  forms  of  wastage  was  the  reck- 
less destruction  of  the  natural  fertility  of 
the  soil.  The  final  result,  according  to  Mr. 
Hill,  must  be  that  within  a  comparatively 
brief  period  —  a  period  for  which  the  present 
generation  was  bound  to  take  thought  — 
this  veritable  Land  of  Promise  would  be 
hard  pressed  to  feed  its  own  people,  while 
the  manufactured  exports  to  pay  for  im- 


24  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

ported  food  would  not  be  forthcoming.  It 
should  be  added  that  this  sensational  fore- 
cast was  no  purposeless  jeremiad.  Mr.  Hill 
told  his  hearers  that  the  danger  which 
threatened  the  future  of  the  Nation  would 
be  averted  only  by  the  intelligence  and  in- 
dustry of  those  who  cultivated  the  farm  lands, 
and  that  they  had  it  in  their  power  to  provide 
a  perfectly  practicable  and  adequate  remedy. 
This  was  to  be  found  —  if  such  a  condensa- 
tion be  permissible  —  in  the  application 
of  the  physical  sciences  to  the  practice,  and 
of  economic  science  to  the  business,  of  farm- 
ing. 

In  spite  of  the  immense  burden  of  great 
undertakings  which  he  carried,  Mr.  Hill  re- 
peated the  substance  of  this  address  on  many 
occasions.  Lord  Rosebery  once  said  that 
speeches  were  the  most  ephemeral  of  all 
ephemeral  things,  and  for  some  time  it  looked 
as  if  one  of  the  most  important  speeches 
ever  delivered  by  a  public  man  on  a  great 
public  issue  was  going  to  illustrate  the  truth 


The  Launching  of  Two  Policies         25 

of  this  saying.  It  seems  strange  that  his 
facts  and  arguments  should  have  remained 
unchallenged,  and  yet  unsupported,  by  other 
public  men.  Perhaps  the  best  explanation 
is  to  be  found  in  a  recent  dictum  of  Mr. 
James  Bryce.  Speaking  at  the  University 
of  California,  the  British  Ambassador  said: 
11 We  can  all  think  of  the  present,  and  are 
only  too  apt  to  think  chiefly  about  the 
present.  The  average  man,  be  he  educated 
or  uneducated,  seldom  thinks  of  anything 
else."  There  are,  however,  special  circum- 
stances in  the  history  of  the  United  States 
which  account  for  the  extraordinary  uncon- 
cern about  what  is  going  to  happen  to  the 
race  in  a  period  which  may  seem  long  to 
those  whose  personal  interest  fixes  a  limit 
to  their  gaze,  but  which  is  indeed  short  in 
the  life  of  a  nation.  After  the  religious, 
political,  and  military  struggles  through 
which  the  American  nation  was  brought  to 
birth,  there  followed  a  century  of  no  less 
strenuous  wrestling  with  the  forces  of  nature. 


26  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

That  century  stands  divided  by  the  greatest 
civil  conflict  in  the  world's  history;  but  this 
only  served  to  strengthen  in  a  united  people 
those  indomitable  qualities  to  which  the 
nation  owes  its  leadership  in  the  advance- 
ment of  civilisation.  The  abundance  (until 
now  considered  as  virtual  inexhaustibility) 
of  natural  resources,  the  call  for  capital  and 
men  for  their  development,  the  rich  reward 
of  conquest  in  the  field  of  industry,  may 
explain,  but  can  hardly  excuse,  a  National 
attitude  which  seems  to  go  against  the 
strongest  human  instinct  —  one  not  alto- 
gether wanting  in  lower  animal  life — that 
of  the  preservation  of  the  race.  It  is  an 
attitude  which  recalls  the  question  said  to 
have  been  asked  by  an  Irishman:  "What 
has  posterity  done  for  me?"  But  this  was 
before  Conservation  was  in  the  air. 

I  have  now  told  what  I  came  by  chance 
to  know  about  the  origin  of  the  Conservation 
idea.  The  story  of  its  early  growth  was  no 
less  remarkable  than  the  suddenness  of  its 


The  Launching  of  Two  Policies         27 

appearance.  In  the  spring  of  1908  matters 
had  advanced  so  far  that  the  governors  of 
all  the  States  and  Territories  met  to  discuss 
it.  Before  the  Conference  broke  up  they 
were  moved  to  "  declare  the  conviction  that 
the  great  prosperity  of  our  country  rests 
upon  the  abundant  resources  of  the  land 
chosen  by  our  forefathers  for  their  homes," 
that  these  resources  are  "a  heritage  to  be 
made  use  of  in  establishing  and  promoting 
the  comfort,  prosperity,  and  happiness  of  the 
American  people,  but  not  to  be  wasted, 
deteriorated,  or  needlessly  destroyed;  that 
this  material  basis  is  threatened  with  ex- 
haustion" ;  that  "conservation  of  our  natural 
resources  is  a  subject  of  transcendent  im- 
portance which  should  engage  unremittingly 
the  attention  of  the  Nation,  the  States,  and 
the  people  in  earnest  cooperation";  and 
that  "this  cooperation  should  find  expression 
in  suitable  action  by  the  Congress  and  by 
the  legislatures  of  the  several  States." 
It  is,  of  course,  not  with  Conservation,  but 


28  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

with  Rural  Life,  that  we  are  here  directly 
concerned;  but  it  should  be  borne  in  mind 
that  the  chief  of  all  the  nation's  resources 
is  the  fertility  of  the  soil.  More  than  one 
competent  authority  declared  at  the  Con- 
ference of  Governors  that  this  national  asset 
was  the  subject  of  the  greatest  actual  waste, 
and  was  at  the  same  time  capable  of 
the  greatest  development  and  conservation. 
This  interdependence  of  the  two  Roosevelt 
policies  —  the  fact  that  neither  of  them  can 
come  to  fruition  without  the  success  of  the 
other  —  makes  those  of  us  who  work  for 
rural  progress  rest  our  chief  hopes  upon  the 
newly  aroused  public  opinion  in  the  Ameri- 
can Republic. 

To  my  knowledge  this  view  is  shared  by 
President  Roosevelt,  who  always  regarded 
his  Conservation  and  Rural  Life  policies 
as  complementary  to  each  other.  The  last 
time  I  saw  him  —  it  was  on  Christmas  Eve, 
1908  —  he  dwelt  on  this  aspect  of  his  public 
work  and  aims.  I  remember  how  he  ex- 


The  Launching  of  Two  Policies        29 

pressed  the  hope  that,  when  the  more  striking 
incidents  of  his  Administration  were  forgotten, 
public  opinion  would  look  kindly  upon  his 
Conservation  and  Rural  Life  policies.  I 
ventured  upon  the  confident  prediction  that 
he  would  not  be  disappointed  in  this  antici- 
pation. Already  the  authors  of  the  Con- 
servation policy  have  been  rewarded  by 
a  general  acceptance  of  the  principle  for 
which  they  stand.  The  national  conscience 
now  demands  that  the  present  generation, 
while  enjoying  the  material  blessings  with 
which  not  only  nature  but  also  the  labour 
and  sacrifices  of  their  forefathers  have  so 
bounteously  endowed  them,  shall  have  due 
regard  for  the  welfare  of  those  who  are  to 
come  after  them. 

Americans,  who  are  accustomed  to  rapid 
developments  in  public  opinion,  will  hardly 
appreciate  the  impression  made  by  the  story 
I  have  just  told  upon  the  mind  of  an  observer 
from  old  countries,  where  action  does  not 
tread  upon  the  heels  of  thought.  But  surely 


30  »  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

an  amazing  thing  has  happened.  In  the  life 
of  one  Administration  a  great  idea  seizes 
the  mind  of  the  American  people.  This 
leads  to  a  stock-taking  of  natural  resources 
and  a  searching  of  the  national  conscience. 
Then,  suddenly,  there  emerges  a  quite  new 
national  policy.  Conceived  during  the  last 
Administration,  when  it  brought  Mr.  Roose- 
velt aud  Mr.  Bryan  on  to  the  same  platform, 
Conservation  at  once  rose  above  party,  and 
will  be  the  accepted  policy  of  all  future 
Administrations.  It  has  already  secured 
almost  Pan-American  endorsement  at  its 
birthplace  in  Washington.  The  fathers  of 
Conservation  are  now  looking  forward  to  a 
still  larger  sphere  of  influence  for  their  off- 
spring at  an  International  Conference  which 
it  is  hoped  to  assemble  at  the  Hague. 

But  it  must  be  admitted  that  no  such 
reception  was  accorded  to  Mr.  Roosevelt's 
other  policy,  to  which  our  attention  must 
now  be  turned.  The  reasons  for  the  com- 
parative lack  of  interest  in  the  problem  of 


The  Launching  of  Two  Policies        31 

Rural  Life  are  many  and  complex,  but  two 
of  them  may  be  noted  in  passing.  Conserva- 
tion calls  for  legislative  and  administrative 
action,  and  this  always  sets  up  a  ferment 
in  the  political  mind.  The  Rural  Life  idea, 
on  the  other  hand,  though  it  will  demand 
some  governmental  assistance,  must  rely 
mainly  upon  voluntary  effort.  The  methods 
necessary  for  its  development,  and  their 
probable  results,  are  also  less  obvious,  and 
thus  less  easily  appreciated  by  the  public. 
Whatever  the  reason,  while  Conservation 
has  rushed  into  the  forefront  of  public  in- 
terest and  has  won  the  status  and  dignity  of 
a  policy,  the  sister  idea  is  still  struggling  for 
a  platform,  and  its  advocates  must  be  con- 
tent to  see  their  efforts  towards  a  higher  and 
a  better  country  life  regarded  as  a  movement. 
This  estimate  of  the  relative  positions  of 
these  two  ideas  in  the  public  mind  will,  I 
think,  be  borne  out  when  we  contrast  the 
quiet  initiation  of  the  movement  with  the 
dramatic  d£but  of  the  policy.  For  all  the  offi- 


32  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

cialism  with  which  it  was  launched,  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's  Country  Life  Commission 
might  as  well  have  been  appointed  by  some 
wealthy"philanthropist  who  would,  at  least, 
have  paid  its  members'  travelling  expenses,1 
and  private  initiation  might  also  have  spared 
us  the  ridicule  which  greeted  the  alleged  pro- 
posal to  " uplift"  a  body  of  citizens  who  were 
told  that  they  were  already  adorning  the 
heights  of  American  civilisation.  The  names 
of  the  men  who  volunteered  for  this  unpaid 
service  should  have  been  a  sufficient  guaran- 
tee that  theirs  was  no  fool's  errand.2 

1  These,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  were  defrayed  by  the 
trustees  of  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation. 

*  The  Commission  consisted  of  L.  H.  Bailey,  of  the 
New  York  State  College  of  Agriculture  at  Cornell  Uni- 
versity (chairman) ;  Henry  Wallace,  editor  of  Wallace's 
Farmer,  Des  Moines,  Iowa;  Kenyon  L.  Butterfield, 
President  of  the  Massachusetts  Agricultural  College, 
Amherst,  Massachusetts;  Walter  H.  Page,  editor  of 
The  World's  Work,  New  York  City;  Gifford  Pinchot, 
United  States  Forester,  and  Chairman  of  the  National 
Conservation  Commission;  C.  S.  Barrett,  President  of 
the  Farmers'  Co-operative  and  Educational  Union  of 
America,  Union  City,  Georgia;  W.  A.  Beard,  of  the 
Great  West  Magazine,  Sacramento,  California. 


The  Launching  of  Two  Policies        33 

How  real  was  the  problem  the  commis- 
sioners were  investigating  was  abundantly 
proved  to  those  who  were  present  when  they 
got  into  touch  with  working  farmers  and 
their  wives,  and  discussed  freely  and  inform- 
ally the  conditions,  human  and  material,  to 
which  the  problem  of  Rural  Life  relates.  I 
shall  refer  again  to  their  report.  But  I  may 
here  say  I  am  firmly  convinced  that  a  com- 
plete change  in  the  whole  attitude  of  public 
opinion  towards  the  old  question  of  town  and 
country  must  precede  any  large  practical 
outcome  to  the  labours  of  the  Commission. 
It  has  to  be  brought  home  to  those  who  lead 
public  opinion  that  for  many  decades  we, 
the  English-speaking  peoples,  have  been  un- 
consciously guilty  of  having  gravely  neg- 
lected one  side,  and  that  perhaps  the  most 
important  side,  of  Western  civilisation. 

To  sustain  this  judgment  I  must  now  view 
the  sequerice  of  events  which  led  to  the  sub- 
ordination of  rural  to  urban  interests,  and  try 
to  estimate  its  probable  consequences.  It 


34  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

will  be  seen  that  the  neglect  is  comparatively 
recent,  and  of  English  origin.  I  believe  that 
the  New  World  offers  just  now  a  rare  oppor- 
tunity for  launching  a  movement  which  will 
be  directed  to  a  reconstruction  of  rural  life. 
It  is  this  belief  which  has  prompted  an  Irish 
advocate  of  rural  reform  to  turn  his  thoughts 
away  for  a  brief  space  from  the  poorer  peas- 
antry of  his  own  country  and  to  take  counsel 
with  his  fellow-workers  in  the  United  States 
and  Canada  on  a  problem  which  affects  them 
all. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   ORIGIN  AND   CONSEQUENCES  OF 
RURAL   NEGLECT 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  ORIGIN  AND  CONSEQUENCES  OF  RURAL 
NEGLECT 

THE  most  radical  economic  change  which 
history  records  set  in  during  the  last  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century  in  England,  as  the 
result  of  that  remarkable  achievement  of 
modern  civilisation,  the  Industrial  Revolu- 
tion. Mechanical  inventions  changed  all  in- 
dustry, setting  up  the  factories  of  the  town 
instead  of  the  scattered  home  production  of 
the  country  and  its  villages.  In  the  wake 
of  the  new  inventions  economic  science 
stepped  in,  and,  scrupulously  obeying  its  own 
law  of  demand  and  supply,  told  the  then 
predominant  middle  classes  just  what  they 
wished  to  be  told.  Adam  Smith  had  made 
the  wonderful  discovery  that  money  and 
wealth  were  not  the  same  thing.  Then 
37 


38  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

Ricardo,  and  after  him  the  Manchester  School 
of  economists,  made  division  of  labour  the 
cardinal  virtue  in  the  new  gospel  of  wealth. 
In  order  to  give  full  play  to  this  economic 
principle  all  workers  in  mechanical  indus- 
tries were  huddled  together  in  the  towns. 
There  they  were  to  be  transformed  from 
capricious,  undisciplined  humans  into  me- 
chanical attachments,  and  restricted  to  such 
functions  as  steam-driven  automata  had  not 
yet  learned  to  perform.  That  was  the  first 
stage  of  the  Industrial  Revolution,  with  its 
chief  consequences,  the  rural  exodus  and 
urban  overcrowding.  It  is  a  hideous  night- 
mare to  look  back  upon  from  these  more 
enlightened  days.  Well  might  the  angels 
weep  over  the  flight  of  all  that  was  best 
from  the  God-made  country  to  the  man- 
made  town. 

Before  the  middle  of  the  last  century  the 
clouds  began  to  lift.  For  a  while  the  good 
Lord  Shaftesbury  seemed  to  be  crying  in  the 
wilderness  of  middle-class  plutocracy,  but  it 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect         39 

was  not  long  before  the  crying  of  the  children 
in  their  factories  stirred  the  national  con- 
science. The  health  of  nations  was  allowed 
to  be  considered  as  well  as  their  wealth. 
Social  and  political  science  rose  up  in  protest 
against  both  the  economists  and  the  manu- 
facturers. There  followed  a  period  of  be- 
neficent social  changes,  no  less  radical  than 
those  which  the  new  mechanical  inventions 
had  produced  in  the  economics  of  industry. 
The  factory  town  of  to-day  presents  a  strange 
contrast  to  that  which  sacrificed  humanity 
to  material  aggrandisement.  What  with  its 
shortened  hours  of  labour,  superior  artisan 
dwellings,  improved  sanitation,  parks,  open 
spaces  and  playgrounds,  free  instruction  and 
cheap  entertainment  for  old  and  young,  hos- 
pitals and  charities,  rapid  transportation, 
a  popular  Press,  and  full  political  freedom, 
the  modern  hive  of  industry  stands  as  a  monu- 
ment of  what,  under  liberal  laws,  can  be  done 
by  education  and  organisation  to  realise  the 
higher  aspirations  of  a  people. 


40  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

During  this  second  period,  another  eco- 
nomic development  produced  upon  the  atti- 
tude of  the  urban  mind  towards  the  rural 
population  an  effect  to  which,  I  think,  has 
not  been  given  the  consideration  it  deserves. 
Better  and  cheaper  transportation,  with  the 
consequent  establishment  of  what  the  econ- 
omists call  the  world-market,  completely 
changed  the  relationship  between  the  towns- 
man and  the  farmer.  A  sketch  of  their 
former  mutual  relations  will  make  my 
meaning  clear.  Within  the  last  century 
every  town  relied  largely  for  its  food  sup- 
ply on  the  produce  of  the  fields  around 
its  walls.  The  countrymen  coming  into  the 
weekly  market  were  the  chief  customers 
for  the  wares  of  the  town  craftsmen.  In 
this  primitive  state  of  trade,  townsmen 
could  not  but  realise  the  importance  to  them- 
selves of  a  prosperous  country  population 
around  them.  But  this  simple  exchange,  as 
we  all  know,  has  developed  into  the  complex 
commercial  operations  of  modern  times. 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect         41 

To-day  most  large  towns  derive  their  house- 
hold stuff  from  the  food-growing  tracts  of  the 
whole  world,  and  I  doubt  whether  any  are 
dependent  on  the  neighbouring  farmers,  or 
feel  themselves  specially  concerned  for  their 
welfare.  I  do  not  think  the  general  truth  of 
this  picture  will  be  questioned,  and  I  hope 
some  consideration  may  be  given  to  the  con- 
clusions I  now  draw. 

In  the  transition  we  are  considering,  the 
reciprocity  between  the  producers  of  food 
and  the  raw  material  of  clothes  on  the  one 
hand,  and  manufacturers  and  general  traders 
of  the  towns  on  the  other,  has  not  ceased;  it 
has  actually  increased  since  the  days  of  steam 
and  electricity.  But  it  has  become  national, 
and  even  international,  rather  than  local. 
Town  consumers  are  still  dependent  upon 
agricultural  producers,  who,  in  turn,  are 
much  larger  consumers  than  formerly  of  all 
kinds  of  commodities  made  in  towns.  Forty- 
two  per  cent  of  materials  used  in  manufac- 
ture in  the  United  States  are  from  the  farm, 


42  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

which  also  contributes  seventy  per  cent  of  the 
country's  exports.  But  in  the  complexity  of 
these  trade  developments  townsmen  have 
been  cut  of?  more  and  more  from  personal 
contact  with  the  country,  and  in  this  way 
have  lost  their  sense  of  its  importance.  My 
point  is  that  the  shifting  of  the  trade  rela- 
tionship of  town  and  country  from  its  former 
local  to  its  present  national  and  international 
basis  in  reality  increases  their  interdepend- 
ence. And  I  hold  most  strongly  that  until 
in  this  matter  the  obligations  of  a  common 
citizenship  are  realised  by  the  town,  we  can- 
not hope  for  any  lasting  National  progress. 

Whatever  be  the  causes  which  have  be- 
gotten the  neglect  of  rural  life,  no  one  will 
gainsay  the  wisdom  of  estimating  the  con- 
sequences. These  are  economic,  social,  and 
political;  and  I  will  discuss  them  briefly 
under  these  heads.  There  are  three  main 
economic  reasons  which  suggest  a  closer  study 
of  rural  conditions.  First,  there  is  the  inter- 
dependence of  town  and  country,  less  obvious 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect         43 

than  it  was  in  the  days  of  the  local  market, 
but  no  less  real.  Any  fall  in  the  number,  or 
decline  in  the  efficiency,  of  the  farming  com- 
munity, will  be  accompanied  by  a  corre- 
sponding fall  in  the  country  sale  of  town 
products.  This  is  especially  true  of  America, 
where  the  foreign  commerce  is  unimportant 
in  comparison  with  internal  trade.  To  nour- 
ish country  life  is  the  best  way  to  help  home 
trade.  .  And  quite  as  important  as  these  con- 
siderations is  the  effect  which  good  or  bad 
farming  must  have  upon  the  cost  of  living 
to  the  whole  population.  Excessive  middle 
profits  between  producer  and  consumer  may 
largely  account  for  the  very  serious  rise  in 
the  price  of  staple  articles  of  food.  This 
is  a  fact  of  the  utmost  significance,  but,  as  I 
shall  show  later,  the  remedy  for  too  high  a 
cost  of  production  and  distribution  lies  with 
the  farmer,  the  improvement  of  whose  busi- 
ness methods  will  be  seen  to  be  the  chief 
factor  in  the  reform  which  the  Rural  Life 
movement  must  attempt  to  introduce. 


44  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

The  essential  dependence  of  nations  on 
agriculture  is  the  second  economic  considera- 
tion. The  author  of  "The  Return  to  the 
Land,"  Senator  Jules  Meline  (successively 
Minister  of  Agriculture,  Minister  of  Com- 
merce and  Premier  of  France),  tells  us  that 
this  remarkable  book  is  "  merely  an  expan- 
sion of  a  profound  thought  uttered  long  ago 
by  a  Chinese  philosopher:  'The  well-being 
of  a  people  is  like  a  tree;  agriculture  is  its 
root,  manufacture  and  commerce  are  its 
branches  and  its  life;  if  the  root  is  injured 
the  leaves  fall,  the  branches  break  away  and 
the  tree  dies/  " 

This  truth  is  not  hard  to  apply  to  the 
conditions  of  to-day.  The  income  of  every 
country  depends  on  its  natural  resources, 
and  on  the  skill  and  energy  of  its  inhabitants ; 
and  the  quickest  way  to  increase  the  income 
is  to  concentrate  on  the  production  of  those 
articles  for  which  there  is  the  greatest  demand 
throughout  the  commercial  world.  The  re- 
lentless application  of  this  principle  has  been 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect         45 

characteristic  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
But  the  augmentation  of  income  has  in  one 
special  way  been  purchased  by  a  diminution 
of  capital.  The  industrial  movement  has 
been  based  on  an  immense  expenditure  of 
coal  and  iron;  and  in  America  and  Great 
Britain  the  coal  and  iron  which  can  be  cheaply 
obtained  are  within  measurable  distance  of 
exhaustion.  As  these  supplies  diminish,  the 
industrial  leadership  of  America  and  Great 
Britain  must  disappear,  unless  they  can  em- 
ploy their  activities  in  other  forms  of  indus- 
try. Those,  therefore,  who  desire  that  the 
English-speaking  countries  should  maintain 
for  many  ages  that  high  position  which  they 
now  occupy,  should  do  all  in  their  power  to 
encourage  a  proper  system  of  agriculture — 
the  one  industry  in  which  the  fullest  use  can 
be  made  of  natural  resources  without  dimin- 
ishing the  inheritance  of  future  generations 
—  the  industry  "about  which/'  Mr.  James 
J.  Hill  emphatically  declares,  "all  others  re- 
volve, and  by  which  future  America  shall 
stand  or  fall." 


46  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

The  third  economic  reason  will  hardly  be 
disputed.  Agricultural  prosperity  is  an  im- 
portant factor  in  financial  stability.  The 
fluctuations  of  commerce  depend  largely 
on  the  good  and  bad  harvests  of  the  world, 
but,  as  they  do  not  coincide  with  them  in 
time,  their  violence  is,  on  the  whole,  likely 
to  be  less  in  a  nation  where  agricultural  and 
manufacturing  interests  balance  each  other, 
than  in  one  depending  mainly  or  entirely 
on  either.  The  small  savings  of  numerous 
farmers,  amounting  in  the  aggregate  to 
very  large  sums,  are  a  powerful  means  of 
steadying  the  money  market ;  they  are  not 
liable  to  the  vicissitudes  nor  attracted  by 
the  temptations  which  affect  the  larger  in- 
vestors. They  remain  a  permanent  national 
resource,  which,  as  the  experience  of  France 
proves,  may  be  confidently  drawn  upon  in  time 
of  need.  I  have  often  thought  that,  were  it 
not  for  the  thrift  and  industry  of  the  French 
peasantry,  financial  crises  would  be  as  fre- 
quent in  France  as  political  upheavals. 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect         47 

As  regards  the  social  aspect  of  rural  neglect, 
I  suggest  that  the  city  may  be  more  seriously 
concerned  than  is  generally  imagined  for 
the  well-being  of  the  country.  One  cannot 
but  admire  the  civic  pride  with  which  Ameri- 
cans contemplate  their  great  centres  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce,  where,  owing  to  the 
many  and  varied  improvements,  the  towns- 
man of  the  future  is  expected  to  unite  the 
physical  health  and  longevity  of  the  Boeotian 
with  the  mental  superiority  of  the  Athenian. 
But  we  may  ask  whether  this  somewhat 
optimistic  forecast  does  not  ignore  one  im- 
portant question.  Has  it  been  sufficiently 
considered  how  far  the  moral  and  physical 
health  of  the  modern  city  depends  upon  the 
constant  influx  of  fresh  blood  from  the  coun- 
try, which  has  ever  been  the  source  from 
which  the  town  draws  its  best  citizenship? 
You  cannot  keep  on  indefinitely  skimming 
the  pan  and  have  equally  good  milk  left. 
In  America  the  drain  may  continue  a  while 
longer  without  the  inevitable  consequences 


48  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

becoming  plainly  visible.  But  sooner  or 
later,  if  the  balance  of  trade  in  this  human 
traffic  be  not  adjusted,  the  raw  material 
out  of  which  urban  society  is  made  will  be 
seriously  deteriorated,  and  the  symptoms 
of  National  degeneracy  will  be  properly 
charged  against  those  who  neglected  to  fore- 
see the  evil  and  treat  the  cause.  It  is 
enough  for  my  present  purpose  if  it  be 
admitted  that  the  people  of  every  state  are 
largely  bred  in  rural  districts,  and  that  the 
physical  and  moral  well-being  of  these  dis- 
tricts must  eventually  influence  the  quality 
of  the  whole  people. 

I  come  now  to  the  political  considerations 
which,  I  think,  have  not  been  sufficiently 
taken  into  account.  In  most  countries  po- 
litical life  depends  largely  for  its  steadiness 
and  sanity  upon  a  strong  infusion  of  rural 
opinion  into  the  counsels  of  the  nation.  It  is 
a  truism  that  democracy  requires  for  success 
a  higher  level  of  intelligence  and  character 
in  the  mass  of  the  people  than  other  forms 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect         49 

of  government.  But  intelligence  alone  is 
not  enough  for  the  citizen  of  a  democracy; 
he  must  have  experience  as  well,  and  the 
experience  of  a  townsman  is  essentially  im- 
perfect. He  has  generally  a  wider  theoretical 
knowledge  than  the  rustic  of  the  main  pro- 
cesses by  which  the  community  lives;  but 
the  rustic's  practical  knowledge  of  the  more 
fundamental  of  them  is  wider  than  the  towns- 
man's. He  knows  actually  and  in  detail 
how  corn  is  grown  and  how  beasts  are  bred, 
whereas  the  town  artisan  hardly  knows  how 
the  whole  of  any  one  article  of  commerce  is 
made.  The  townsman  sees  and  takes  part 
in  the  wonderful  achievements  of  industrial 
science  without  any  full  understanding  of 
its  methods  or  of  the  relative  importance 
and  the  interaction  of  the  forces  engaged. 
To  this  one-sided  experience  may  be  attrib- 
uted in  some  measure  that  disregard  of 
inconvenient  facts,  and  that  impatience  of 
the  limits  of  practicability,  which  many 
observers  note  as  a  characteristic  defect  of 
popular  government. 

T 


50  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

However  that  may  be,  there  is  one  symp- 
tom in  modern  politics  of  which  the  gravity 
is  generally  acknowledged,  while  its  special 
connection  with  the  towns  is  an  easily  as- 
certainable  fact:  I  mean  the  growth  of  the 
cruder  forms  of  Socialism.  The  town  artisan 
or  labourer,  who  sees  displayed  before  him 
vast  masses  of  property  in  which  he  has  no 
share,  and  contrasts  the  smallness  of  his 
remuneration  with  the  immense  results  of  his 
labour,  is  easily  attracted  to  remedies  worse 
than  the  disease.  A  fuller  and  more  exact 
understanding  of  the  means  by  which  the 
wealth  of  the  community  is  created  is,  for 
the  townsman,  the  best  antidote  to  mis- 
chievous agitation  so  far  as  it  is  not  merely 
the  result  of  poverty.  But  the  countryman, 
especially  the  proprietor  of  a  piece  of  land, 
however  small,  is  protected  from  this  in- 
fection. The  atmosphere  in  which  Socialism 
of  the  predatory  kind  can  grow  up  does  not 
exist  among  a  prosperous  farming  com- 
munity—  perhaps  because  in  the  country 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect.        51 

the  question  of  the  divorce  of  the  worker 
from  his  raw  material  by  capitalism  does  not 
arise.  The  farm  furnishes  the  raw  material 
of  the  farmer;  yet  he  cannot  be  said  to 
spend  his  life  creating  the  alleged  "  surplus 
value"  of  Marxian  doctrine.  For  these 
reasons  I  suggest  that  the  orderly  and  safe 
progress  of  democracy  demands  a  strong  agri- 
cultural population.  It  is  as  true  now  as 
when  Aristotle  said  it  that  "  where  husband- 
men and  men  of  small  fortune  predominate 
government  will  be  guided  by  law." 

I  have  now  shown  that  for  every  reason 
the  interests  of  the  rural  population  ought 
no  longer  to  be  subordinated  to  those  of 
the  city.  That  such  has  been  the  tendency 
in  English-speaking  countries  will  hardly 
be  questioned.  In  Great  Britain  the  rural  exo- 
dus has  gone  on  with  a  vengeance.  The  last 
census  (1901)  showed  that  seventy-seven  per 
cent  of  the  population  was  urban,  and  only 
twenty-three  per  cent  rural.  A  few  years  ago 
there  were  derelict  farms  within  easy  walk  of 


52  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

the  outskirts  of  London.  In  Ireland  the  rural 
exodus  took  the  form  of  emigration,  mainly 
to  American  cities,  and  this  has  been  the 
chief  factor  in  the  reduction  of  the  population 
in  sixty  years  from  more  than  eight  millions 
to  a  trifle  above  four.  But  it  may  be  thought 
that  in  the  United  States  no  similar  tendency 
is  in  operation.  Certainly  those  who  admit 
the  townward  drift  of  country  life  may  fairly 
say  that  it  does  not  present  so  urgent  a 
problem  in  the  New  World  as  in  parts  of  the 
Old.  Even  granting  that  this  is  so,  the 
fact  remains  that  the  town  population  of 
America  is  seriously  outgrowing  the  rural 
population ;  for,  while  the  towns  are  growing 
hugely,  the  country  stands  still.  Moreover, 
we  must  not  forget  that,  Australia  apart, 
America  is  even  still  the  most  underpopu- 
lated part  of  the  globe.  We  are  accustomed 
to  think  Ireland  underpopulated,  owing  to 
emigration,  yet  even  to-day  the  scale  of 
population  is  almost  six  times  greater  than 
that  of  the  United  States.  If  the  Union 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect         53 

were  peopled  as  thickly  as  Ireland  even  still 
is,  the  population  would  be  nearly  five  hun- 
dred millions.  There  is  still  a  vast  deal  of 
filling-up  to  be  done  in  America,  mostly  in 
the  rural  parts. 

But  the  main  consideration  I  wish  to  em- 
phasise throughout  is  that  the  problem  under 
review  is  moral  and  social  far  more  than 
economic,  human  rather  than  material.  This 
is  the  natural  view  of  an  Irish  worker,  who 
knows  that  the  solution  of  his  problem  de- 
pends upon  the  possibility  of  endowing  coun- 
try life  with  such  social  improvements  as 
will  provide  an  effective  compensation  for 
a  necessarily  modest  standard  of  comfort. 
But  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  may 
be  pardoned  for  being  physiocrats.  The 
statistical  proof,  annually  furnished,  of  the 
growing  agricultural  wealth,  is  apt  to  ob- 
scure other  essentials  of  progress.  The 
astronomical  proportions  of  the  figures 
stagger  the  imagination,  and  engender  the 
kind  of  pride  a  man  feels  when  he  is  first 


54  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

told  the  number  of  red  corpuscles  luxuriating 
in  his  blood.  How  can  there  be  agricultural 
depression  in  a  country  whose  farm  lands 
Secretary  Wilson,  in  his  notable  Annual  Re- 
port for  1905,  declared  to  have  increased 
in  value  over  a  period  of  five  years  at  the 
astounding  rate  of  $3,400,000  per  day? 
Yet  to  the  deeper  insight,  the  same  moral 
influence  through  which  we  in  Ireland  are 
seeking  to  combat  the  evils  of  material 
poverty  may  in  the  United  States  be  needed 
as  a  moral  corrective  to  a  too  rapidly  growing 
material  prosperity.  The  patriotic  Ameri- 
can, who  thinks  of  the  life  of  the  Nation 
rather  than  of  the  individual,  will,  if  he  looks 
beneath  the  surface,  discern  in  this  God- 
prospered  country  symptoms  of  rural  deca- 
dence fraught  with  danger  to  National  effi- 
ciency. 

The  reckless  sacrifice  of  agricultural  inter- 
ests by  the  legislators  of  the  towns  is  con- 
demned by  the  verdict  of  history.  We  need 
not  now  fear  that  invading  hordes  of  hardy 


Consequences  of  Rural  Neglect         55 

barbarians  will  mar  the  destiny  of  the  great 
Western  Republic,  as  they  ended  the  career 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  There  are,  however, 
other  clouds  upon  the  horizon.  Only  a  few 
years  ago,  the  American  people  could  well 
treat  with  contempt  the  bogy  of  the  Yellow 
Peril.  With  a  transformation  unprecedented 
in  history,  the  situation  has  been  changed. 
Japan  is  already  devoting  to  the  arts  of 
peace  qualities  but  yesterday  displayed  in 
war,  to  the  amazement  of  the  Western 
world.  In  another  Eastern  empire  there 
are  vast  resources  —  especially  coal  and 
iron  in  juxtaposition  —  awaiting  only  in- 
dustrial leadership  to  utilise  a  practically 
limitless  labour  supply  for  their  development. 
These  are  facts  worthy  of  consideration  for 
their  potential  bearing  upon  the  industrial 
and  commercial  standing  of  the  United 
States. 

To  the  onlooker,  it  does  seem  a  happy  cir- 
cumstance that  there  has  just  been,  for  seven 
critical  years,  at  the  head  of  American 


56  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

affairs  the  strenuous  advocate  of  the  strenu- 
ous life.  I  read  through  his  Messages  the 
warning  that  in  the  struggle  for  preeminence 
the  ultimate  victory  will  lie  with  those  nations 
who  found  their  prosperity  on  the  high 
physical  and  ethical  condition  of  the  people. 
That  is  the  oldest,  as  it  is  the  latest,  wisdom 
of  the  East.  It  is  in  this  spirit  that  the 
neglected  problem  of  Rural  Life  should  now 
be  given  some  share  of  the  attention  hitherto 
devoted  to  the  life  of  the  towns. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  INNER  LIFE  OF  THE  AMERICAN 
FARMER 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  INNER  LIFE  OF  THE  AMERICAN  FARMER 

I  RECENTLY  asked  a  German  economist  if 
he  could  tell  me  the  best  books  to  read  upon 
the  problem  of  rural  life  in  Germany.  His 
reply  was:  " There  are  no  books,  because 
there  is  no  problem."  It  is  generally  true, 
no  doubt,  that  the  Rural  Life  problem,  in  so 
far  as  it  consists  in  the  subordination  of  the 
country  to  the  town,  is  peculiar  to  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking countries,  where  it  seems  to  be 
mainly  attributable  to  three  causes.  The 
chief  of  these  was  no  doubt  the  Industrial 
Revolution  in  England,  of  which  enough  has 
already  been  said.  Secondly,  in  the  United 
States  and  in  some  portions  of  the  British 
Empire,  the  opening  up  of  vast  tracts  of  vir- 
gin soil  led  not  unnaturally  to  the  postpone- 
ment of  social  development  until  the  pioneer 

59 


60  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

farmers  had  settled  down  to  the  new  life. 
The  third  cause  was  immunity  from  the  dan- 
ger of  foreign  invasion,  which  eliminated  the 
military  reasons  for  maintaining  a  numerous, 
virile,  and  progressive  rural  population. 

There  are  many  in  England  who  regret 
that  it  should  have  been  forgotten  how  the 
English  owed  their  commercial  supremacy  to 
the  fighting  qualities  of  the  old  yeoman  class. 
In  the  United  States  it  should  be  remem- 
bered that  nowadays  peace  strength  is  quite 
as  important  as  war  strength,  and  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  there  can  be  any  sus- 
tained industrial  efficiency  where  the  great 
body  of  workers  who  conduct  the  chief  —  the 
only  absolutely  necessary — industry  are  wast- 
ing the  resources  at  their  command  by  bad 
husbandry.  We  may,  however,  concede  that 
the  neglect  of  rural  life  is  much  easier  to  ex- 
plain and  excuse  in  the  United  States  than  in 
the  older  English-speaking  countries.  Quite 
apart  from  the  abundance  of  agricultural 
resources  which  the  American  farmers  enjoy, 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer    61 

it  might  well  be  thought  that  the  rural  com- 
munities are  keeping  pace  with  the  progress 
of  urban  civilisation.  The  citizens  who  now 
occupy  the  farm  lands  of  the  United  States 
have  been  largely  drawn  from  the  pick  of  the 
European  peasantries.  In  the  days  of  their 
coming,  it  took  courage  and  enterprise  to  face 
the  now  almost  forgotten  terrors  of  the 
Atlantic  Ocean.  These  immigrants,  and  the 
migrants  from  the  Eastern  States,  have  pro- 
fited enormously  by  their  change  of  residence. 
Their  material  well-being  has  already  been 
admitted,  and,  with  rare  exceptions,  they 
have  displayed  no  overt  symptoms  of  agra- 
rian discontent. 

It  must  not,  however,  be  imagined  that 
the  apparent  apathy  of  American  farmers  is 
due  to  contentment.  Like  others  of  their 
calling,  they  keep  a  full  stock  of  grievances  in 
their  mental  stores.  They  have  very  defi- 
nite opinions  as  to  what  is  wrong,  but  to  these 
opinions  no  formal  expression  is  given.  They 
vaguely  feel  that  they  would  like  to  remould 


62  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

"the  sorry  scheme  of  things  entire,"  but  they 
lack  the  public  spirit  which  is  required  before 
concerted  action  can  be  taken  successfully. 
The  Country  Life  Commission  held  a  series 
of  conferences  throughout  the  United  States, 
which  brought  them  into  the  closest  touch 
with  every  type  of  American  farm  life.  They 
received  written  replies  from  some  125,000 
rural  folk  to  whom  they  had  sent  a  circular 
with  a  dozen  questions  covering  the  essential 
heads  of  inquiry.  The  Commissioners  say 
in  their  report :  ' '  We  have  found  by  the  testi- 
mony, not  only  of  the  farmers  themselves, 
but  of  all  persons  in  touch  with  farm  life,  more 
or  less  serious  unrest  in  every  part  of  the 
United  States,  even  in  the  most  prosperous 
regions." 

The  truth  is  that,  while  judged  by  the 
standard  of  living  of  European  peasantries, 
the  farmers  of  the  United  States  are  prosper- 
ous, in  comparison  with  the  other  citizens  of 
the  most  progressive  country  in  the  world 
they  are  not  well-off.  Their  accumulation 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer    63 

of  material  wealth  is  unnaturally  and  un- 
necessarily restricted;  their  social  life  is 
barren;  their  political  influence  is  relatively 
small.  American  farmers  have  been  used  by 
politicians,  but  have  still  to  learn  how  to  use 
them.  This  may  be  due  to  the  fact  that  my 
countrymen  elected  to  devote  their  genius 
for  organisation  to  the  problems  of  city  gov- 
ernment. And  in  the  sphere  of  private 
action  they  are,  as  will  be  seen  when  I  discuss 
the  need  for  a  reorganisation  of  their  business, 
even  less  effective  than  in  public  affairs. 

It  will  be  conceded  that  any  hopeful  plan 
to  put  things  right  will  have  to  rely  upon  the 
organised  efforts  of  those  immediately  con- 
cerned. Both  in  the  sphere  of  governmental 
action,  and  in  the  vastly  more  important 
field  of  voluntary  effort,  the  moving  force  will 
have  to  be  public  opinion.  But  the  thought 
of  the  farming  communities  has  long  ago 
joined  the  rural  exodus;  and  before  the 
country  life  idea  can  find  expression  in  an 
effective  country  life  movement,  those  who 


64  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

are  thinking  out  the  problem  will  have  to 
commend  their  arguments  to  the  thought  of 
the  towns.  Therefore  I  address  these  pages, 
not  to  farmers  only,  but  to  the  general  reader 
—  who,  I  may  observe,  does  not  generally 
read  if  he  happens  to  live  in  the  open  coun- 
try. 

In  the  course  of  my  own  studies  of  Ameri- 
can rural  life  I  have  found  it  convenient  to 
divide  the  United  States  into  four  sections, 
each  of  them  more  or  less  homogeneous.  As 
this  method  of  treatment  may  help  my 
readers,  I  will  give  them  a  look  at  my  map  of 
American  rural  life.  The  four  sections  may 
be  called  the  North  Eastern,  the  Middle 
Western,  the  Southern,  and  the  Far  Western. 
The  division  has  no  pretensions  to  be  scien- 
tific; the  boundaries  can  be  adjusted  to  fit 
in  with  the  experience  of  each  reader. 

In  my  North  Eastern  section  I  include  the 
New  England  States,  New  York,  New  Jersey, 
and  most  of  Pennsylvania.  This  is  a  section 
where  manufacturing  communities  have  long 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  65 

been  established,  where  migration  from  coun- 
try to  town  has  been  most  marked,  and  where 
the  competition  of  the  newly  settled  Western 
farm  lands  has  been  followed  by  effects  upon 
agricultural  society  very  similar  to  those 
produced  by  the  same  causes  in  many  a  rural 
community  on  the  Continent  of  Europe. 
Second  comes  the  Middle  Western  section, 
consisting  mainly  of  the  Mississippi  Valley, 
with  its  vast  area  of  high  average  fertility, 
the  greatest  food-producing  tract  on  the 
continent.  Third,  I  place  the  Southern 
section,  where  the  governing  factors  in  rural 
economy  are  the  climate,  the  numerical 
strength  of  the  colored  population,  the  two 
staple  industrial  crops  —  cotton  and  tobacco 
—  the  comparatively  recent  abolition  of 
slavery,  and  the  long-drawn-out  effects  of 
the  Civil  War.  My  fourth  division,  the  Far 
Western  section,  includes  the  ranching  lands 
of  the  arid  belt  with  their  irrigation  oases, 
and  the  fruit-growing  and  farming  lands  of 
the  Pacific  Coast. 


66  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

As  we  are  discussing  the  problem  chiefly  in 
its  human  aspect,  which  affects  alike  com- 
munities wealthy  and  impoverished,  large 
and  small,  old-settled  and  newly  established, 
it  will  not  matter  essentially  where  we  first 
direct  our  attention  for  the  purpose  of  illus- 
tration. But  if,  as  I  hold,  nothing  less 
than  a  reconstruction  of  rural  civilisation  is 
called  for,  our  inquiries  will  be  more  profit- 
ably directed  to  those  sections  where  agricul- 
tural society  is  permanently  established,  or 
where  the  rural  population  might  abandon 
the  migratory  habit  if  the  conditions  were 
more  favorable  to  an  advanced  civilisation. 
At  the  present  stage  I  feel  that  the  whole 
subject  can  be  most  profitably  discussed  in 
its  application  to  the  Middle  Western  and  the 
Southern  sections.  Here  the  intimate  re- 
lationship of  the  Conservation  and  the  Coun- 
try Life  ideas  is  best  illustrated.  Here,  too, 
we  get  into  touch  with  the  problem  at  its  two 
extremes  of  prosperity  and  poverty,  each  in 
its  own  way  retarding  the  progress  of  rural 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  67 

civilisation.    In  both  sections  the  conditions 
are  typical,  and  distinctively  American. 

Let  us  then  consider  first  the  general 
course  of  rural  civilisation  in  the  great  food- 
producing  tract  of  the  Middle  West.  I  have 
in  my  mind  the  portion  I  know  best,  the  last- 
settled  part  of  the  corn  belt.  Thirty  years 
ago  I  saw  something  of  the  newcomers  who 
settled  in  this  section,  where  there  was  still 
much  raw  land.  These  settlers,  knowing 
that  the  land  must  rise  rapidly  in  value, 
almost  invariably  purchased  much  larger 
farms  than  they  could  handle.  They  often 
sank  their  available  working  capital  in  mak- 
ing the  first  payments  for  their  land,  and 
went  heavily  into  debt  for  the  balance.  They 
became  "land  poor,"  and,  in  order  to  meet 
the  instalments  of  purchase  and  the  high 
interest  on  their  mortgages,  they  invented  a 
system  of  farming  unprecedented  in  its  waste- 
fulness. The  farm  was  treated  as  a  mine,  or, 
to  use  Mr.  James  J.  Hill's  metaphor,  as  a  bank 
where  the  depositors  are  always  taking  out 


68  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

more  than  they  put  in.  A  corn  crop,  year 
after  year,  without  rotation  or  fertilisers, 
satisfied  the  new  conception  of  husbandry  — 
the  easiest  and  least  costly  extraction  of  the 
wealth  in  the  soil.  Land,  labour,  capital,  and 
ability  I  had  been  taught  to  regard  as  the 
essentials  of  production;  but  here  capital 
was  reduced  to  the  minimum,  and  ability 
left  to  nature.  Many  of  the  young  men  who 
took  Horace  Greeley's  advice  and  went  West 
knew  nothing  about  farming.  I  remember 
writing  home  that  I  was  in  a  country  where 
the  rolling  stone  gathered  most  moss.  Pos- 
sibly the  method  adopted  was  the  quickest 
way  to  get  rich ;  living  on  capital  is  all  right 
provided  somebody  will  replace  the  squan- 
dered resources.  While  there  were  ample 
unoccupied  lands,  Uncle  Sam  looked  kindly 
upon  these  enterprising  pioneers.  It  was 
only  in  the  second  Roosevelt  Administration 
that  it  dawned  upon  the  national  conscience 
that  the  nation  had  some  claim  to  be  con- 
sidered as  well  as  the  individual.  Of  course 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  69 

all  this  is  changed  now;  although  I  am  not 
sure  that  western  Canada  is  not  being  edu- 
cated in  soil  exhaustion  by  some  of  these 
extemporised  husbandmen  whose  habits  and 
temperament  lead  them  to  seek  "  fresh  fields 
and  pastures  new."  "We  are  not  out  here 
for  our  health,"  was  the  reply  I  got  when  I 
showed  that  my  old-fashioned  economic 
sense  was  shocked  by  this  substitution  of 
land  speculation  for  farming. 

I  am  aware  that  this  very  uneconomic 
procedure  is  capable  of  some  plausible  ex- 
planations. The  opening  up  of  the  vast 
new  territory  by  the  provision  of  local  traffic 
for  transcontinental  lines  was  an  object  of 
national  urgency  and  importance.  Never- 
theless, I  think  it  must  now  be  regretted 
that  a  little  more  thought  was  not  given  to 
the  general  problem  of  rural  economy,  of 
which  transit  is  but  one  factor.  This  may 
be  that  irritating  kind  of  wisdom  which  comes 
after  the  event,  but  I  cannot  help  regarding 
the  policy  of  rewarding  railroad  enterprises 


70  The.  Rural  Life  Problem 

with  unconditional  grants  of  vast  areas  o! 
agricultural  land  as  one  of  the  many  evi- 
dences of  the  urban  domination  over  rural 
affairs. 

Of  the  earlier  settled  portions  of  this  section 
I  cannot  speak  from  personal  knowledge. 
But  a  recent  magazine  article,1  "The  Agra- 
rian Revolution  in  the  Middle  West,"  fol- 
lows closely  the  line  of  my  own  thoughts.  In 
this  article  Mr.  Joseph  B.  Ross,  of  Lafayette, 
Indiana,  who  is  making  a  special  study  of 
the  evolution  of  American  rural  life,  considers 
it  in  three  periods:  from  1800  to  1835,  from 
1835  to  1890,  and  from  1890  to  the  present 
time.  In  the  middle  period  he  shows  how 
the  most  progressive  families  raised  their 
standard  of  living  steadily  with  the  growing 
prosperity  of  the  country.  They  built  them- 
selves stately  homes  with  substantial  barns. 
The  farmer  was  developing  into  a  citizen  with 
the  solid  virtues,  the  virile  independence, 
the  strong  political  opinions,  religious  inter- 

1  North  American  Review,  September,  1909. 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  71 

est,  and  social  instincts  which  characterised 
the  English  yeoman  of  the  preceding  century. 
The  social  life  which  these  communities  built 
up,  as  soon  as  their  economic  position  was 
assured,  was  a  reflection  of  the  best  English 
traditions  —  it  centred  round  the  churches 
and  the  Sunday-school.  There  was  a  grow- 
ing distribution  of  literature  as  well  as  or- 
ganisation for  intellectual,  educational  and 
social  purposes.  Mr.  Ross  notes  the  winter 
excursions  to  Florida  and  California,  the 
adornment  of  the  homes,  and  many  other 
evidences  of  a  social  progress  developing 
a  character  of  its  own.  During  this  period 
there  was  a  migration  from  the  country  homes 
to  the  cities;  but  it  was  only  the  natural 
outflow  of  the  surplus  members  of  the  rural 
families  into  the  professional  and  business 
life  of  the  growing  centres  of  commerce  and 
industry. 

In  the  period  through  which  we  are  now 
passing  a  transformation  is  taking  place. 
The  rural  exodus  is  no  longer  that  of  individ- 


72  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

uals,  but  of  whole  families.  The  farms  thua 
vacated  are  let  to  tenants,  generally  on  a 
three  years'  lease,  at  a  competition  rent. 
The  Country  Life  Commission  says  that  this 
tendency  to  move  to  the  cities  "is  not  pe- 
culiar to  any  region.  In  difficult  farming 
regions,  and  where  the  competition  with  other 
farming  sections  is  most  severe,  the  young 
people  may  go  to  town  to  better  their  con- 
dition. In  the  best  regions  the  older  people 
retire  to  town  because  it  is  socially  more 
attractive,  and  they  see  a  prospect  of  living 
in  comparative  ease  and  comfort  on  the 
rental  of  their  lands.  Nearly  everywhere 
there  is  a  townward  movement  for  the  pur- 
pose of  securing  school  advantages  for  the 
children.  All  this  tends  to  sterilize  the 
open  country  and  to  lower  its  social  status." 
The  Commission  points  out  that  the  new 
addition  of  what  is  likely  to  be  a  stationary 
element,  whose  economic  interests  lie  else- 
where, to  the  citizenship  of  the  town,  may 
create  there  a  new  social  problem,  while  the 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  73 

tenant  in  the  country  will  not  have  that 
interest  in  building  up  rural  society  which 
might  be  expected  in  the  owners  of  land. 
Mr.  Ross's  studies  lead  him  very  definitely 
to  the  same  conclusion.  Churches  and  edu- 
cational institutions,  he  tells  us,  are  being 
starved,  and  rural  society  is  fast  reverting 
to  the  type  which  was  prevalent  from  thirty 
to  fifty  years  ago.  But  there  is  one  great 
difference  between  then  and  now.  Then, 
rural  civilisation  was  passing  through  a  stage 
of  marked  social  advancement  which  was 
common  throughout  the  country;  now, 
there  are  distinct  indications  of  social  de- 
generation, which  Mr.  Ross  regards  as  the 
inevitable  consequence  of  the  new  landlord 
and  tenant  system.  Many  members  of  these 
communities  must  have  left  the  Old  World 
to  escape  from  the  selfsame  conditions  which 
they  are  reproducing  in  the  New. 

Rural  society  in  the  Middle  West,  as  it 
presents  itself  to  the  observer  whose  au- 
thority I  have  cited,  is  obviously  in  a  transi- 


74  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

tional  stage.  The  lack  of  farm  labourers, 
which  is  the  common  subject  of  complaint 
by  farmers  in  all  parts  of  the  United  States, 
cannot  fail  to  be  aggravated  by  the  change 
in  the  conditions  of  tenancy  just  noted. 
The  man  whose  chief  concern  is  to  get  the 
most  out  of  the  land,  at  the  least  expense,  in 
two  or  three  years,  will  not  treat  his  labourers 
so  well  —  nor  the  land  so  well  —  as  will  the 
man  who  means  to  spend  his  life  on  the  farm ; 
and  therefore  the  labourers  will  not  stay. 
This  scarcity  of  labour  may  be  met  to  some 
extent  by  an  increased  use  of  machinery; 
but  it  is  more  likely  to  lead  to  poorer  culti- 
vation, which  means  the  depopulation  of 
agricultural  districts.  England  and  Ireland 
furnish  too  many  examples  of  the  rural 
decay  immortalised  in  Goldsmith's  "  De- 
serted Village."  It  would  be  strange  and 
sad  if  the  experience  were  to  be  repeated  on 
the  richest  soil  of  America. 

In  the  Southern  section  we  find  a  wasteful- 
ness similar  to  that  in  the  corn  belt,  but  due 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  75 

to  wholly  different  causes.  The  communities 
are  old-settled,  but  in  many  instances  they 
are  still  abnormally  depressed  by  the  terrible 
effects  of  the  great  war,  followed  by  a  period 
of  social  and  economic  stagnation.  Here 
there  was  little  but  agriculture  for  the  people 
to  rely  upon,  and  their  methods  have,  until 
recent  years,  been  very  backward.  The 
growing  of  the  same  crops  year  after  year 
upon  the  same  fields,  the  neglect  of  precau- 
tion against  the  washing  away  of  the  soil 
surface,  and  the  failure  to  use  fertilisers, 
have  made  the  profits  of  tillage  disappoint- 
ingly small.  Billions  of  dollars  have  been 
lost  by  these  communities  through  persistent 
soil  exhaustion  and  erosion.  In  the  last  few 
years  the  Federal  Department  of  Agriculture 
has  maintained  a  most  efficient  staff  of  agri- 
cultural experts  under  the  direction  of  Dr. 
Knapp,  one  of  the  ablest  organisers  of  farm 
improvement  I  have  ever  met.  The  General 
Education  Board,  who  administer  large  sums 
provided  by  Mr.  Rockefeller,  recognising 


76  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

the  educational  value  of  Dr.  Knapp's  opera- 
tions, are  contributing  about  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars  a  year  to  his  work.  Dr. 
Knapp  and  his  field  agents  have  no  difficulty 
at  all  in  demonstrating  that  the  yield  may 
be  doubled,  and  the  cost  of  production 
greatly  reduced,  merely  by  the  application 
of  the  most  elementary  science  to  agriculture. 
I  heard  him  tell  of  a  farmer  whom  he  had 
induced  to  allow  his  boy  — still  attending 
school  —  to  cultivate  one  acre  under  his 
instructions.  In  the  result  the  boy  quad- 
rupled the  number  of  bushels  of  corn  to  the 
acre  that  his  father,  following  the  traditional 
methods,  was  able  to  raise.  It  would  be 
easy  to  multiply  such  instances  of  thriftless- 
ness  and  neglected  opportunity,  of  poverty 
within  easy  reach  of  abundance,  which  have 
brought  it  about  that  the  future  of  the  nation 
is  actually  endangered  by  the  failure  of  the 
food  supply  to  keep  pace  with  the  increase 
of  its  still  relatively  sparse  population. 
The  Southern  section  furnishes  two  illus- 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  77 

trations  of  long-standing  neglect,  both  well 
worthy  of  consideration  for  their  pregnant 
suggestiveness.  The  Federal  Department 
of  Agriculture  recently  scored  a  notable 
success  in  dealing  with  an  insect  pest  which 
was  threatening  the  cotton-growing  industry 
with  economic  ruin.  The  boll-weevil,  like 
the  legal  and  medical  professions,  thrives 
upon  the  follies  of  humanity.  It  attacks 
the  cotton  plants  which  have  been  weakened 
by  bad  husbandry.  The  scientists  did  not 
succeed  in  finding  in  the  commonwealth 
of  bugs  the  natural  enemy  of  the  pest  they 
were  after,  but  Dr.  Knapp,  with  the  wisdom 
which  prefers  prevention  to  cure,  seized  the 
opportunity  of  teaching  cotton-growers  to 
diversify  their  cultivation.  The  consequence 
was  that  the  cotton  crop  itself  is  gradually 
responding  to  the  treatment.  Many  other 
crops  are  adding  their  quota  to  the  produce 
of  the  Southern  farms,  and  an  all-round 
improvement,  moral  as  well  as  material, 
is  accompanying  the  educational  discipline 


78  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

through  which  this  reformer  is  putting  the 
communities  with  whom  and  for  whom  he 
is  working. 

There  is  another  pest  in  the  South  which 
does  not  attack  the  farm  crops,  but  goes 
straight  for  the  farmer.  If  the  Country 
Life  Commission  had  done  nothing  more, 
they  would  have  justified  their  appointment 
by  the  attention  they  called  to  the  ravages 
of  the  hookworm,  which  have,  no  one  knows 
how  long,  scourged  the  poor  white  communi- 
ties in  the  Southern  States.  The  effect  of 
the  disease  set  up  by  the  hookworm,  which 
infests  the  intestines,  is  a  complete  sapping 
of  all  energy,  mental  and  physical.  Mr. 
Rockefeller  has  provided  a  million  dollars 
for  the  necessary  research  work  and  for  such 
subsequent  organisation  of  sanitary  effort 
as  may  be  required  to  extirpate  this  un- 
questionably preventable  evil.  I  wonder 
how  long  such  a  state  of  affairs  would  have 
been  permitted  to  interfere  with  the  health 
and  to  paralyse  the  industry  of  urban  com- 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  79 

munities.  Had  the  hookworm,  instead  of 
lurking  in  country  lanes,  walked  the  streets, 
how  would  it  have  fared? 

These  two  pests  furnish  a  fine  illustration 
of  the  length  to  which  the  neglect  of  rural 
life  has  been  allowed  to  go  in  the  Southern 
States. 

Neither  the  Eastern  nor  the  Far  West- 
ern section  presents  aspects  of  special  inter- 
est to  the  foreign  student  of  the  Rural 
problem  in  the  United  States,  but  in  both 
the  constructive  statesman  and  the  social 
worker  will  find  a  rich  field  for  their  efforts. 
In  the  New  England  States  —  more  espe- 
cially in  the  manufacturing  districts  —  the 
competition  between  town  and  country  for 
labour  is  as  marked  as  in  Industrial  England. 
In  this  section,  however,  the  lure  of  the  city 
has  a  rival  in  the  call  of  the  West,  which  still 
makes  its  appeal  to  the  farmer's  boy.  Secre- 
tary Wilson  has  recently  given  it  as  his  opin- 
ion that  land-seekers  who  pass  by  the  farms 
now  offered  for  sale  in  the  western  portions 


80  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

of  New  York  State  often  go  further  and  fare 
worse.  In  these  relatively  low-priced  lands, 
it  ought  not  to  be  difficult  for  agricultural 
communities  to  establish  permanently  a 
rural  society  worthy  of  American  ideas  of 
progress.  But  to  do  this  is  to  solve  the 
problem  we  are  discussing.  We  have  some 
other  aspects  of  that  problem  to  consider 
before  we  can  agree  upon  the  essentials  of  a 
philosophic  and  comprehensive  scheme  for 
the  rehabilitation  of  rural  life  —  before  we 
can  lay  down  the  lines  of  a  movement  to  give 
effect  to  our  plan. 

The  Far  Western  section  has  hardly  yet 
emerged  from  the  frontier-pioneer  stage,  and 
its  rural  problem  is  still  below  the  horizon. 
I  may,  however,  note  in  passing  a  few  evi- 
dences that  the  people  of  this  section  have 
already  shown  a  very  real  concern  for  rural 
progress.  The  fruit-growers  of  the  Pacific 
Coast  have,  in  the  cooperative  marketing  of 
their  produce,  made  an  excellent  beginning 
in  A  matter  of  first  importance  in  any  scheme 


The  Inner  Life  of  the  American  Farmer  81 

of  rural  development.  On  irrigation  farm 
lands  there  has  been  developed,  in  connec- 
tion with  the  upkeep  and  control  of  the  water 
systems,  a  community  spirit  which  will 
surely  lead  to  many  forms  of  organisation 
for  mutual  economic  and  social  advantage. 
In  the  city  of  Spokane,  Washington,  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  has  aroused  a  public 
interest  in  the  work  of  the  Country  Life 
Commission  which,  so  far  as  my  information 
goes,  has  not  been  equalled  elsewhere  in  the 
United  States.  The  Chamber  is  republishing 
the  Report  of  the  Commission,  for  which  no 
Federal  appropriation  appears  to  have  been 
made.  It  would  seem  to  be  a  not  wild 
speculation  that  the  statesmen  and  social 
workers  who  will  first  solve  the  rural  prob- 
lem of  the  English-speaking  peoples  may  be 
found  in  the  Far  West  of  the  New  World  as 
well  as  of  the  Old. 

I  must  now  conclude  the  diagnosis  of  rural 
decadence  by  a  consideration  of  what  in  my 
judgment  is  the  chief  cause  of  the  malady, 


82  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

and  so  get  to  a  point  where  we  can  determine 
the  nature  of  the  remedy.  It  will  then  re- 
main only  to  sketch  the  outlines  of  the 
movement  which  is  to  give  practical  effect 
to  the  agreed  principles  in  the  life  of  rural 
communities. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  WEAK  SPOT  IN  AMERICAN   RURAL 
ECONOMY 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  WEAK  SPOT  IN  AMERICAN  RURAL 
ECONOMY 

THE  evidence  of  competent  American  wit- 
nesses proves  that  there  is,  in  the  United 
States,  notwithstanding  its  immense  agri- 
cultural wealth,  a  Rural  Life  problem.  Here, 
as  elsewhere,  on  a  fuller  analysis,  the  utmost 
variety  of  race,  soil,  climate  and  market 
facilities  serve  but  to  emphasise  the  impor- 
tance of  the  human  factor.  But  this  con- 
sideration does  not  lessen  the  need  for  a 
sternly  practical  treatment  of  the  rural  social 
economy  under  review.  In  this  chapter,  I 
propose  to  go  right  down  to  the  roots  of  the 
rural  problem,  find  what  is  wrong  with  the  in- 
dustry by  which  the  country  people  live,  and 

see  how  it  can  be  righted.    We  should  then 
85 


86  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

have  clearly  in  our  minds  the  essentials  of 
prosperity  in  a  rural  community. 

Agriculture,  the  basis  of  a  rural  existence, 
must  be  regarded  as  a  science,  as  a  business 
and  as  a  life.  I  have  already  adverted  to 
President  Roosevelt's  formula  for  solving 
the  rural  problem  —  "  better  farming,  better 
business,  better  living."  Better  farming 
simply  means  the  application  of  modern 
science  to  the  practice  of  agriculture.  Better 
business  is  the  no  less  necessary  application 
of  modern  commercial  methods  to  the  busi- 
ness side  of  the  farming  industry.  Better 
living  is  the  building  up,  in  rural  communities, 
of  a  domestic  and  social  life  which  will  with- 
stand the  growing  attractions  of  the  modem 
city. 

This  threefold  scheme  of  reform  covers 
the  whole  ground  and  will  become  the  basis 
of  the  Country  Life  movement  to  be  sug- 
gested later.  But  in  the  working  out  of  the 
general  scheme,  there  must  be  one  impor- 
tant change  in  the  order  of  procedure  —  'bet- 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy    87 

ter  business '  must  come  first.  The  dull 
commercial  details  of  agriculture  have  been 
sadly  neglected,  perhaps  on  account  of  the 
more  human  interest  of  the  scientific  and 
social  aspects  of  country  life.  Yet  my  own 
experience  in  working  at  the  rural  problem  in 
Ireland  has  convinced  me  that  our  first  step 
towards  its  solution  is  to  be  found  in  a  better 
organisation  of  the  farmer's  business.  It  is 
strange  but  true  that  the  level  of  efficiency 
reached  in  many  European  countries  was 
due  to  American  competition,  which  in  the 
last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  forced 
Continental  farmers  to  reorganise  their 
industry  alike  in  production,  in  distribution 
and  in  its  finance.  Both  Irish  experience 
and  Continental  study  have  convinced  me 
that  neither  good  husbandry  nor  a  worthy 
social  life  can  be  ensured  unless  accompanied 
by  intelligent  and  efficient  business  methods. 
We  must,  therefore,  examine  somewhat  criti- 
cally the  agricultural  system  of  the  American 
farmer,  and  see  wherein  its  weakness  lies. 


88  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

The  superiority  of  the  business  methods  of 
the  town  to  those  of  the  country  is  obvious, 
but  I  do  not  think  the  precise  nature  of  that 
superiority  is  generally  understood.  What 
strikes  the  eye  is  the  material  apparatus 
of  business,  —  the  street  cars,  the  advertise- 
ments, the  exchange,  the  telephone,  the  type- 
writer; all  these  form  an  impressive  contrast 
with  the  slow,  simple  life  of  the  farmer,  who 
very  likely  scratches  his  accounts  on  a  shingle 
or  keeps  them  in  his  head.  But  most  of  this 
city  apparatus  is  due  merely  to  the  necessity 
of  swift  movement  in  the  concentrated 
process  of  exchange  and  distribution.  Such 
swiftness  is  neither  necessary  nor  possible 
in  the  process  of  isolated  production.  But 
there  is  an  economic  law,  applicable  alike  to 
rural  and  to  urban  pursuits,  which  is  being 
more  and  more  fully  recognised  and  obeyed 
by  the  farmers  of  most  European  countries, 
including  Ireland,  but  which  has  been  too 
little  heeded  by  the  farmers  of  the  United 
States  and  Great  Britain.  Under  modern 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy    89 

economic  conditions,  things  must  be  done  in  a 
large  way  if  they  are  to  be  done  profitably; 
and  this  necessitates  a  resort  to  combination. 
The  advantage  which  combination  gives 
to  the  town  over  the  country  was  recognised 
long  before  the  recent  economic  changes 
forced  men  to  combine.  In  the  old  towns 
of  Europe  all  trades  began  as  strict  and  ex- 
clusive corporations.  In  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  centuries  new  scientific  and  eco- 
nomic forces  broke  up  these  combinations, 
which  were  far  too  narrow  for  the  growing 
volume  of  industrial  activity,  and  an  epoch 
of  competition  began.  The  great  towns  of 
America  opened  their  business  career  during 
this  epoch,  and  have  brought  the  arts  of 
competition  to  a  higher  perfection  than  exists 
in  Europe.  But  it  has  always  been  known 
that  competition  did  not  exclude  combination 
against  the  consumer;  and  it  is  now  begin- 
ning to  be  perceived  that  the  fiercer  the  com- 
petition, the  more  surely  does  it  lead  in  the 
end  to  such  combination. 


90  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

A  trade  combination  has  three  principal 
objects:  it  aims,  first,  at  improving  what  I 
may  call  the  internal  business  methods  of 
the  trade  itself  by  eliminating  the  waste  due 
to  competition,  by  economising  staff,  plant, 
etc.,  and  by  the  ready  circulation  of  intelli- 
gence, and  in  other  ways.  In  the  second 
place,  it  aims  at  strengthening  the  trade 
against  outside  interests.  These  may  be  of 
various  kinds ;  but  in  the  typical  case  we  are 
considering,  namely,  the  combination  of 
great  middlemen  who  control  exchange  and 
distribution,  the  outside  interests  are  those  of 
the  producer  on  one  side  and  the  consumer 
on  the  other;  and  the  trade  combination,  by 
its  organised  unity  of  action,  succeeds  in 
lowering  the  prices  it  pays  to  the  unorganised 
producer  and  in  raising  the  prices  it  charges 
to  the  unorganised  consumer.  In  the  third 
place,  the  trade  combination  seeks  to  favour 
its  own  interests  in  their  relation  to  other 
interests  through  political  control  —  control 
not  so  much  of  the  machinery  of  politics  as  of 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy    91 

its  products,  legislation  and  administration. 
I  am  not  now  arguing  the  question  whether 
or  how  far  this  action  on  the  part  of  trade 
combinations  is  morally  justifiable.  My  point 
is  simply  that  the  towns  have  flourished  at 
the  expense  of  the  country  by  the  use  of 
these  methods,  and  that  the  countryman  must 
adopt  them  if  he  is  to  get  his  own  again. 
Moreover,  as  organisation  tends  to  increase 
the  volume  and  lower  the  cost  of  agricultural 
production  and  to  make  possible  large  trans- 
actions between  organised  communities  of 
farmers  and  the  trade,  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
organised  combination  of  farmers  will  sim- 
plify the  whole  commerce  of  those  countries 
where  it  is  adopted,  and  thus  benefit  alike 
the  farmer  and  the  trader. 

This  truth  will  be  easily  realised  if  we  con- 
sider for  a  moment  the  system  of  distribu- 
tion which  the  food  demand  of  the  modern 
market  has  evolved.  Agricultural  produce 
finds  its  chief  market  in  the  great  cities. 
Their  populations  must  have  their  food  so 


92  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

sent  in  that  it  can  be  rapidly  distributed; 
and  this  requires  that  the  consignments  must 
be  delivered  regularly,  in  large  quantities, 
and  of  such  uniform  quality  that  a  sample 
will  give  a  correct  indication  of  the  whole. 
These  three  conditions  are  essential  to  rapid 
distribution,  but  their  fulfilment  is  not  within 
the  power  of  isolated  farmers,  however  large 
their  operations.  It  is  an  open  question 
whether  farmers  should  themselves  undertake 
the  distribution  of  their  produce  through 
agencies  of  their  own,  thus  saving  the  whole- 
sale and  possibly  the  retail  profits.  But  un- 
questionably they  should  be  so  well  organised 
at  home  that  they  can  take  this  course  if 
they  are  unfairly  treated  by  organised  middle- 
men. The  Danish  farmers,  whose  highly 
organised  system  of  distribution  has  made 
them  the  chief  competitors  of  the  Irish 
farmers,  have  established  (with  Government 
assistance  which  their  organisation  enabled 
them  to  secure)  very  efficient  machinery  for 
distributing  their  butter,  bacon  and  eggs  in 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy    93 

the  British  markets.  Other  European  farm- 
ing communities  are  becoming  equally  well 
organised,  and  similarly  control  the  market- 
ing of  their  produce.  But  where,  as  in 
America  and  the  United  Kingdom,  the  town 
dominates  the  country,  and  the  machinery 
of  distribution  is  owned  by  the  business  men 
of  the  towns,  it  is  worked  by  them  in  their 
own  interests.  They  naturally  take  from 
the  unorganised  producers  as  well  as  from 
the  unorganised  consumers  the  full  business 
value  of  the  service  they  render.  With  the 
growing  cost  of  living,  this  has  become  a 
matter  of  urgent  importance  to  the  towns. 
In  the  cheaper-food  campaign  which  began 
in  the  late  fall  of  1909,  voices  are  heard 
calling  the  farmers  to  account  for  their  un- 
economical methods,  while  here  and  there 
organisations  of  consumers  are  endeavouring 
to  solve  the  problem  to  their  own  satisfaction 
by  acquiring  land  and  raising  upon  it  the 
produce  which  they  require. 
In  the  face  of  such  facts  it  is  not  easy  to 


94  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

account  for  the  backwardness  of  American 
and  British  farmers  in  the  obviously  im- 
portant matter  of  organisation.  The  farmer, 
we  know,  is  everywhere  the  most  conserva- 
tive and  individualistic  of  human  beings. 
He  dislikes  change  in  his  methods,  and  he 
venerates  those  which  have  come  down  to 
him  from  his  fathers7  fathers.  Whatever 
else  he  may  waste,  these  traditions  he  con- 
serves. He  does  not  wish  to  interfere  with 
anybody  else's  business,  and  he  is  fixedly 
determined  that  others  shall  not  interfere 
with  his.  These  estimable  qualities  make 
agricultural  organisation  more  difficult  in 
Anglo-Saxon  communities  than  in  those 
where  clan  or  tribal  instincts  seem  to 
survive.1 

1 1  should  expect  the  negroes  in  the  Southern  States 
to  be  very  good  subjects  for  agricultural  organisation. 
I  have  discussed  this  question  with  the  staff  of  the 
Hampton  Institute  in  Virginia  —  a  fine  body  of  men, 
doing  noble  work.  The  Principal,  the  Rev.  H.  B. 
Frissell,  D.D.,  whose  judgment  in  this  matter  is  prob- 
ably the  weightiest  in  the  United  States,  and  his  lead- 
ing assistants,  both  white  and  coloured,  are  of  the  same 
opinion. 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy    95 

Now  it  is  fair  to  the  fanner  to  admit  that  his 
calling  does  not  lend  itself  readily  to  associa- 
tive action.  He  lives  apart;  most  of  his 
time  is  spent  in  the  open  air,  and  in  the  even- 
ing of  the  working  day  physical  repose. is 
more  congenial  to  him  than  mental  activity. 
But  when  all  this  is  said,  we  have  not  a  com- 
plete explanation  of  the  fact  that,  by  failing 
to  combine,  American  and  British  farmers, 
persistently  disobey  an  accepted  law,  and 
refuse  to  follow  the  almost  universal  practice 
of  modern  business.  I  believe  the  true  ex- 
planation to  be  one  that  has  somehow  escaped 
the  notice  of  the  agricultural  economist. 
Those  who  accept  it  will  feel  that  they  have 
found  the  weak  spot  in  American  farming, 
and  that  the  remedy  is  neither  obscure  nor 
difficult  to  apply. 

The  form  of  combination  which  the  towns 
have  invented  for  industrial  and  commercial 
purposes  is  the  Joint  Stock  Company.  Here 
a  number  of  persons  contribute  their  capital 
to  a  common  fund  and  entrust  the  direction 


96  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

to  a  single  head  or  committee,  taking  no 
further  part  in  the  business  except  to  change 
the  management  if  the  undertaking  does  not 
yield  a  satisfactory  dividend.  Our  urban 
way  of  looking  at  things  has  made  us  assume 
that  this  city  system  must  be  suitable  to  rural 
conditions.  The  contrary  is  the  fact.  When 
farmers  combine,  it  is  a  combination  not  of 
money  only,  but  of  personal  effort  in  rela- 
tion to  the  entire  business.  In  a  cooperative 
creamery,  for  example,  the  chief  contribu- 
tion of  a  shareholder  is  in  milk ;  in  a  coop- 
erative elevator,  corn ;  in  other  cases  it  may 
be  fruit  or  vegetables,  or  a  variety  of  material 
things  rather  than  cash.  But  it  is,  most  of 
all,  a  combination  of  neighbours  within  an 
area  small  enough  to  allow  of  all  the  members 
meeting  frequently  at  the  business  centre. 
As  the  system  develops,  the  local  associations 
are  federated  for  larger  business  transactions, 
but  these  are  governed  by  delegates  care- 
fully chosen  by  the  members  of  the  constit- 
uent bodies. 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy    97 

The  object  of  such  associations  is,  primarily, 
not  to  declare  a  dividend,  but  rather  to  im- 
prove the  conditions  of  the  industry  for  the 
members.  After  an  agreed  interest  has  been 
paid  upon  the  shares,  the  net  profits  are  di- 
vided between  the  participants  in  the  under- 
taking, to  each  in  proportion  as  he  has  con- 
tributed to  them  through  the  business  he 
has  done  with  the  institution.  And  the  same 
idea  is  applied  to  the  control  of  the  manage- 
ment. It  is  recognised  that  the  poor  man's 
cooperation  is  as  important  as  the  rich  man's 
subscription.  'One  man,  one  vote/  is  the 
almost  universal  principle  in  cooperative 
bodies.1 

The  distinction  between  the  capitalistic 
basis  of  joint  stock  organisation  and  the 
more  human  character  of  the  cooperative 
system  is  fundamentally  important.  It  is 

1  Where  capital  is,  in  rare  instances,  subscribed  by 
persons  other  than  farmers,  it  is  usually  invested  less 
as  a  commercial  speculation  than  as  an  act  of  friend- 
ship on  the  part  of  the  investor,  who  in  no  case  exer- 
cises more  control  than  his  one  vote  affords. 


98  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

recognised  by  law  in  England,  where  the 
cooperative  trading  societies  are  organised 
under  The  Industrial  and  Provident  Societies1 
Act,  and  the  cooperative  credit  associations 
under  The  Friendly  Societies1  Act.  In  the 
United  States  (I  am  told  by  friends  in  the 
legal  profession),  the  Articles  of  Association 
of  an  ordinary  limited  liability  company  can 
be  so  drafted  as  to  meet  all  the  requirements 
I  have  named.  Most  countries  have  enacted 
laws  specially  devised  to  meet  the  require- 
ments of  cooperative  societies.  However 
it  is  done,  the  essential  of  success  in  agri- 
cultural cooperation  is  that  the  terms  and 
conditions  upon  which  it  is  based  shall  be  ac- 
cepted by  all  concerned  as  being  equitable  in 
the  distribution  of  profits,  risks  and  control. 
It  then  becomes  the  interest  of  every  mem- 
ber to  give  his  whole-hearted  support  and 
aid  to  the  common  undertaking.  To  ac- 
complish this,  it  is  necessary  to  explain  and 
secure  the  acceptance  of  a  constitution  and 
procedure  carefully  thought  out  to  suit  each 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy    99 

case.  It  will  be  readily  believed  that  asso- 
ciations of  farmers  which  will  meet  these 
conditions  are  not  likely  to  be  spontaneously 
generated ;  hence  the  necessity  for  a  plan  and 
for  the  machinery  to  carry  it  through. 

In  this  matter  I  am  here  speaking  from 
practical  experience  in  Ireland.  Twenty 
years  ago  the  pioneers  of  our  rural  life  move- 
ment found  it  necessary  to  concentrate  their 
efforts  upon  the  reorganisation  of  the  farm- 
er's business.  They  saw  that  foreign  com- 
petition was  not,  as  was  commonly  supposed, 
a  visitation  of  Providence  upon  the  farmers 
of  the  British  Islands,  but  a  natural  economic 
revolution  of  permanent  effect.  Our  message 
to  Irish  farmers  was  that  they  must  imitate 
the  methods  of  their  Continental  compet- 
itors, who  were  defeating  them  in  their  own 
markets  simply  by  superior  organisation. 
After  five  years  of  individual  propagandism, 
the  Irish  Agricultural  Organisation  Society 
was  formed  in  1894  to  meet  the  demand  for 
instruction  as  to  the  formation  and  the  work- 


100  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

ing  of  cooperative  societies,  a  demand  to 
which  it  was  beyond  the  means  of  the  few 
pioneers  to  respond. 

Two  decades  of  steady  development  have 
confirmed  the  soundness  of  the  original 
scheme,  and  a  brief  account  of  agricultural 
cooperation  in  Ireland  will  be  of  interest 
to  any  reader  who  has  persevered  so  far.  The 
conditions  were  in  some  respects  favourable. 
The  farms  are  small  and  their  owners  belong 
to  the  class  to  which  cooperation  brings  most 
immediate  benefit.  The  Irish  peasantry  are 
highly  intelligent.  They  lack  the  strong 
individualism  of  the  English,  but  they  have 
highly  developed  associative  instincts.  For 
this  reason  cooperation,  an  alternative  to 
communism,  —  which  they  abhor,  —  comes 
naturally  to  them.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
ease  with  which  they  can  be  organised  makes 
them  peculiarly  amenable  to  political  in- 
fluence. In  backward  rural  communities 
the  trader  is  almost  invariably  the  political 
boss.  He  is  a  leader  of  agrarian  agitation, 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy   101 

in  which  he  can  safely  advocate  principles 
he  would  not  like  to  see  applied  to  the  re- 
lations between  himself  and  his  customers. 
He  bitterly  opposes  cooperation,  which 
throws  inconvenient  light  upon  those  re- 
lations. We  are  able  to  persuade  the  more 
enlightened  rural  traders  that  economies 
effected  in  agricultural  production  will  raise 
the  standard  of  living  of  his  customers  and 
make  them  larger  consumers  of  general  com- 
modities and  more  punctual  in  their  pay- 
ments. But  in  the  majority  of  cases  the 
agricultural  organiser  finds  politics  in  sharp 
conflict  with  business,  and  has  a  hard  row 
to  hoe.  So,  while  we  have  advantages  in 
organising  Irish  farmers,  we  have  also,  largely 
owing  to  well-known  historical  causes,  to 
overcome  difficulties  which  have  no  counter- 
part in  the  United  States  or  England. 

Nevertheless,  we  managed  to  make  prog- 
ress. We  began  with  the  dairying  industry, 
and  already  half  the  export  of  Irish  butter 
comes  from  the  cooperative  societies  we 


102  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

established.  Organised  bodies  of  farmers 
are  learning  to  purchase  their  agricultural 
requirements  intelligently  and  economically. 
They  are  also  beginning  to  adopt  the  methods 
of  the  organised  foreign  farmer  in  control- 
ling the  sale  of  their  butter,  eggs  and  poultry 
in  the  British  markets.  And  they  not  only 
combine  in  agricultural  production  and  dis- 
tribution, but  are  also  making  a  promising 
beginning  in  grappling  with  the  problem  of 
agricultural  finance.  It  is  in  this  last  por- 
tion of  the  Irish  programme  that  by  far 
the  most  interesting  study  of  the  coopera- 
tive system  can  be  made,  on  account  of 
its  success  in  the  poorest  parts  of  the 
Island.  Furthermore,  the  attempt  to  en- 
able the  most  embarrassed  section  of  the 
Irish  peasantry  to  procure  working  capi- 
tal illustrates  some  features  of  agricultural 
cooperation  which  will  have  suggestive 
value  for  American  farmers.  I  will  there- 
fore give  a  brief  description  of  our  agri- 
cultural cooperative  credit  associations. 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy   103 

The  organisation  was  introduced  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  last  century  by  a  German  Burgo- 
master, the  now  famous  Herr  Raiffeisen. 
He  set  himself  to  provide  the  means  of  escape 
from  the  degrading  indebtedness  to  store- 
keepers and  usurers  which  is  the  almost  in- 
variable lot  of  poor  peasantries.  His  scheme 
performs  an  apparent  miracle.  A  body  of 
very  poor  persons,  individually  —  in  the  com- 
mercial sense  of  the  term  —  insolvent,  man- 
age to  create  a  new  basis  of  security  which 
has  been  somewhat  grandiloquently  and  yet 
truthfully  called  the  capitalisation  of  their 
honesty  and  industry.  The  way  in  which 
this  is  done  is  remarkably  ingenious.  The 
credit  society  is  organised  in  the  usual  demo- 
cratic way  explained  above,  but  its  consti- 
tution is  peculiar  in  one  respect.  The  mem- 
bers have  to  become  jointly  and  severally 
responsible  for  the  debts  of  the  association, 
which  borrows  on  this  unlimited  liability 
from  the  ordinary  commercial  bank,  or,  in 
some  cases,  from  Government  sources.  After 


104  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

the  initial  stage,  when  the  institution  be- 
comes firmly  established,  it  attracts  local 
deposits,  and  thus  the  savings  of  the  com- 
munity, which  are  too  often  hoarded,  are  set 
free  to  fructify  in  the  community.  The 
procedure  by  which  the  money  borrowed  is 
lent  to  the  members  of  the  association  is 
the  essential  feature  of  the  scheme.  The 
member  requiring  the  loan  must  state  what 
he  is  going  to  do  with  the  money.  He  must 
satisfy  the  committee  of  the  association, 
who  know  the  man  and  his  business,  that  the 
proposed  investment  is  one  which  will  enable 
him  to  repay  both  principal  and  interest.  He 
must  enter  into  a  bond  with  two  sureties  for 
the  repayment  of  the  loan,  and  needless  to 
say  the  characters  of  both  the  borrower  and 
his  sureties  are  very  carefully  considered. 
The  period  for  which  the  loan  is  granted  is 
arranged  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  case,  as 
determined  by  the  committee  after  a  full 
discussion  with  the  borrower.  Once  the  loan 
has  been  made,  it  becomes  the  concern  of 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy   105 

every  member  of  the  association  to  see  that 
it  is  applied  to  the  'approved  purpose'  —  as 
it  is  technically  called.  What  is  more  im- 
portant is  that  all  the  borrower's  fellow- 
members  become  interested  in  his  business 
and  anxious  for  its  success. 

The  fact  that  nearly  three  hundred  of 
these  societies  are  at  work  in  Ireland,  and 
that,  although  their  transactions  are  on  a 
very  modest  scale,  the  system  is  steadily 
growing  both  in  the  numbers  of  its  adherents 
and  in  the  business  transacted  is,  I  think, 
a  remarkable  testimony  to  the  value  of  the 
cooperative  system.  The  details  I  have 
given  illustrate  the  important  distinction 
between  cooperation,  which  enables  the 
farmer  to  do  his  business  in  a  way  that  suits 
him,  and  the  urban  form  of  combination, 
which  is  unsuited  to  his  needs.  The  ordi- 
nary banks  lend  money  to  agriculturists  for 
a  term  (generally  ninety  days)  /which  has 
been  fixed  to  suit  the  needs  of  town  business. 
Thus,  a  farmer  borrowing  money  to  sow  a 


106  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

crop,  or  to  purchase  young  cattle,  is  obliged 
to  repay  his  loan,  in  the  first  instance,  be- 
fore the  crop  is  harvested,  and  in  the  second, 
before  the  cattle  mature  and  are  market- 
able. Far  more  important,  however,  than 
these  not  inconsiderable  economic  advan- 
tages are  the  social  benefits  which  are  de- 
rived by  bringing  people  together  to  achieve 
in  a  very  definite  and  practical  way  the  aim 
of  all  cooperative  effort  —  self-help  by  mu- 
tual help. 

Our  cooperative  movement,  taken  as  a 
whole,  is  to-day  represented  by  nearly  one 
thousand  farmers'  organisations,  with  an 
aggregate  membership  of  some  one  hun- 
dred thousand  persons,  mostly  heads  of 
families.  Its  business  turnover  last  year 
was  twelve  and  a  half  million  dollars.  In 
estimating  the  significance  of  these  figures, 
American  readers  must  not  'think  in  con- 
tinents/ and  must  give  more  weight  to  the 
moral  than  to  the  material  achievement. 
As  I  have  explained,  the  cooperative  system 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy  107 

requires  for  its  success  the  exercise  of  higher 
moral  qualities  than  does  the  joint  stock 
company.  Once  a  cooperative  society  be- 
comes a  soulless  corporation,  its  days  are 
numbered.  It  requires  also  the  diffusion  of 
a  good  deal  of  economic  thought  among  its 
members,  and  this,  also,  is  no  small  matter 
in  the  conditions.  The  most  striking  fact 
about  this  work  in  Ireland  is  that  while  in  its 
earlier  years  organisation  consisted  mainly 
in  expounding  and  commending  to  farmers 
the  cooperative  principle,  we  now  find  that 
the  principle  is  taken  for  granted  and  the 
only  question  upon  which  advice  is  needed 
is  how  to  apply  it.  The  progress  of  agricul- 
tural cooperation  depends  largely  on  the 
character  of  the  community ;  its  commercial 
value  may  be  measured  by  the  extent  to 
which  it  develops  in  the  community  the  men- 
tal and  moral  qualities  essential  to  success.1 

1  Readers  who  are  sufficiently  interested  in  the  rural 
life  movement  in  Ireland  will  find  a  full  description  of 
it  in  my  book,  "Ireland  in  the  New  Century,"  John 
Murray,  London,  and  E.  P.  Dutton,  New  York. 


108  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

In  agricultural  cooperation,  Ireland  can 
claim  to  have  shown  the  way  to  the  United 
Kingdom.  Ten  years  ago,  after  the  Irish 
movement  had  been  launched,  the  English 
rural  reformers  started  a  movement  on  ex- 
actly the  same  lines,  even  founding  on  the 
Irish  model  an  English  Agricultural  Organ- 
isation Society.  An  Irishman,  who  had 
studied  cooperation  at  home,  was  selected 
as  its  chief  executive  officer.  Five  years 
later,  a  Scottish  Agricultural  Organisation 
Society  took  the  field.  Both  in  England 
and  in  Scotland  the  chief  difficulty  to  be 
overcome  is  the  intense  individualism  of  the 
farmers,  and  perhaps  some  lack  of  altruism. 
The  large  farmers  did  not  feel  the  need  of 
cooperation,  and  where  the  natural  leader  of 
the  rural  community  will  not  lead,  the  small 
cultivator  cannot  follow.  Whether  the  same 
difficulties  have  prevented  any  considerable 
adoption  of  agricultural  cooperation  in  the 
United  States,  it  is  not  necessary  to  inquire. 
It  is  certain  that  the  underlying  principles 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy   109 

approved  by  every  progressive  rural  com- 
munity in  Europe  have  not  so  far  exercised 
more  than  an  occasional  and  fitful  influence 
upon  the  rural  economy  of  the  American 
Republic. 

If  I  have  given  in  these  pages  a  true  ex- 
planation of  the  deplorable  backwardness  of 
American  farmers  in  the  matter  of  business 
combination  when  compared  with  all  other 
American  workers,  those  who  take  part  in  the 
movement  which  is  to  provide  the  remedy 
will  have  set  themselves  a  task  as  hopeful  as 
it  is  interesting.  Americans  as  a  people  are 
addicted  to  associated  action.  I  have  seen 
the  principle  of  cooperation  developed  to  the 
highest  point  in  the  ranching  industry  hi  the 
days  of  the  unfenced  range.  Our  cattle 
used  to  roam  at  large,  the  only  means  of 
identifying  them  being  certain  registered 
marks  made  by  the  branding-iron  and  the 
knife.  The  individual  owner  would  have 
had  no  more  property  in  his  herd  than  he 
would  have  had  in  so  many  fishes  in  the  sea 


110  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

but  for  a  very  effective  cooperative  organ- 
isation. The  Stock  Association,  with  its 
1  round-ups'  and  its  occasional  resort  to  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Judge  Lynch,  were  an  ade- 
quate substitute  for  the  title  deeds  to  the 
lands,  and  for  fences  horse-high,  bull-strong 
and  hog-tight.  But  then  we  were  in  the  Arid 
Belt  and  the  frontier-pioneer  stage ;  we  had 
no  politics  and  no  politicians.  I  must 
return,  however,  to  the  less  exciting,  but  I 
suppose  more  important,  life  of  the  regular 
farmer,  and  consider  his  efforts  at  organisation. 
Instances  can  be  multiplied  where  the  co- 
operative system  has  been  adopted  with  im- 
mensely beneficial  results;  but  in  too  many 
cases  it  has  been  abandoned.  On  the  other 
hand,  Granges,  Institutes,  Clubs,  Leagues, 
Alliances  and  a  multitude  of  miscellaneous 
farmers'  associations  have  been  organised  for 
social,  religious,  political  and  economic  ob- 
jects. From  my  study  of  the  work  done  by 
these  bodies,  the  impression  left  is  that  almost 
everything  that  can  be  done  better  by  work- 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy    111 

ing  together  than  by  working  separately  has 
been  at  some  time  the  subject  of  organised 
effort.  But  these  manifestations  of  activity 
have  been  fitful  and  sporadic.  They  were 
commonly  marked  by  some  or  all  of  the  same 
defects  —  mutual  distrust,  divided  counsels, 
ignorance  of  what  others  were  doing,  want 
of  continuity  and  impatience  of  results. 
Many  organisations,  after  winning  some  ad- 
vantages,— over  the  railroads  for  instance, — 
fell  into  abeyance  or  even  out  of  existence; 
others  lapsed  under  the  enervating  influence 
of  a  little  temporary  prosperity,  such  as  a  few 
years  of  better  prices.  The  truth  is,  Ameri- 
can farmers  have  had  the  will  to  organise, 
but  they  have  missed  the  way.1 

The  political  influence  of  the  farming  com- 
munity has  for  this  reason  never  been  com- 
mensurate either  with  the  numerical  strength 
of  its  members  or  the  magnitude  of  their 

1Mr.  John  Lee  Coulter  contributed  to  the  Yale 
Review  for  November,  1909,  an  article  on  Organization 
among  the  farmers  of  the  United  States  which  is  a 
most  valuable  summary  of  the  important  facts. 


112  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

share  in  the  nation's  work.  It  is  true  that 
the  Federal  Department  of  Agriculture,  ap- 
propriations for  Agricultural  Colleges,  some 
railway  legislation  and  other  boons  to  farm- 
ers, are  to  be  attributed  to  the  efforts  of 
their  organisations.  Yet,  as  compared  with 
the  influence  exercised  upon  National  affairs 
by  the  farmers  of,  say,  France  and  Denmark, 
the  American  farmer  has  but  a  small  influence 
upon  legislation  and  administration  affecting 
his  interests.  What  better  proof  of  this  could 
be  given  than  the  absence  of  a  Parcels  Post 
in  the  United  States?  The  whole  farming 
community  are  agreed  as  to  the  need  for  this 
boon  to  the  dwellers  of  the  open  country,  and 
yet  they  have  not  succeeded  in  winning  it 
against  the  opposition  of  the  Express  Com- 
panies, because  it  is  merely  a  farmers'  and 
not  a  townsmen's  grievance.  And  not  only 
political  impotence,  but  political  inertia,  re- 
sult from  the  lack  of  organisation.  The 
state  of  the  country  roads  —  one  of  the  great- 
est disabilities  under  which  country  life  in 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy  113 

the  United  States  still  suffers  —  is  as  good 
an  instance  as  I  know.  Congress  has  shown  * 
itself  well  disposed  towards  the  farmer,  but 
not  always  so  the  State  governments,  and 
the  good  intentions  of  Congress  on  the  roads 
question  are  largely  nullified  owing  to  the 
failure  of  one-third  of  the  States  to  establish 
highway  commissions,  or  make  other  provi- 
sion for  expending  such  amounts  as  might  be 
voted  to  them  by  Congress.  Here,  as  in  the 
cases  of  the  transit  and  marketing  problems, 
we  see  the  need  for  a  strong,  central,  perma- 
nent organisation,  fitted  alike  to  direct  local 
or  promote  National  action;  an  association 
capable  of  securing  the  legislative  protection 
of  the  farmer's  interests,  and  an  organisation 
fitted  to  further  the  business  side  of  his  in- 
dustry. In  fact,  this  need  is  urgent,  and  a 
cooperative  movement  of  National  dimen- 
sions should  be  established  to  meet  it.  Had 
such  a  movement  been  started  after  the  War, 
or  even  twenty  years  later,  the  American 
farmer  would  be  in  a  far  stronger  position 


114  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

to-day,  and  much  misdirected  effort  would 
have  been  saved. 

I  have  now  tried  to  explain  the  weak  spot 
in  American  rural  economy.  It  may  be 
regarded  from  a  more  general  point  of  view. 
If  we  were  considering  the  life  of  some  com- 
mercial or  industrial  community  and  trying 
to  forecast  its  future  development,  one  of  the 
first  things  we  should  note  would  be  its  gen- 
eral business  methods.  No  manufacturing 
concern  with  a  defective  office  administration 
and  incompetent  travellers  could  survive, 
even  if  it  had  an  Archimedes  or  an  Edison  in 
supreme  control.  I  cannot  see  any  reason 
why  an  agricultural  community  should  ex- 
pect to  prosper  while  the  industry  by  which 
its  members  live  retains  its  present  business 
organisation.  I  have  urged  that  as  things 
are,  the  farming  interest  is  at  a  fatal  dis- 
advantage in  the  purchase  of  agricultural 
requirements,  in  the  sale  of  agricultural  pro- 
duce, and  in  obtaining  proper  credit  facili- 
ties. Whatever  the  cause  —  and  I  have 


Weak  Spot  in  American  Rural  Economy  115 

set  down  those  which  I  regard  as  the  chief 
among  them  —  American  farmers  have  still 
to  learn  that  they  are  subject  to  a  law  of 
modern  business  which  governs  all  their 
country's  industrial  activities  —  the  law  that 
each  body  of  workers  engaged  in  supplying 
the  modern  market  must  combine,  or  be 
worsted  at  every  turn  in  competition  with 
those  who  do. 

I  do  not  much  fear  that  this  general  prin- 
ciple, overlooked,  perhaps,  because  it  was  too 
obvious  to  be  worth  enforcing,  will  be  dis- 
puted. I  hope  I  may  gain  acceptance  for 
my  further  contention  that  the  inability 
of  American  farmers  to  sustain  an  effective 
business  organisation  has  been  due  simply  to 
the  fact  that  the  not  obvious  distinction 
between  the  capitalistic  and  the  cooperative 
basis  of  combination  suitable  to  town  and 
country  respectively  was  missed.  For  it  will 
then  be  clear  why,  in  the  working  out  of  Mr. 
Roosevelt's  formula,  better  business  must 
precede  and  form  the  basis  of  better  farming 


116  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

and  better  living.  The  conviction  that  in 
this  general  procedure  lies  the  one  hope  of 
solving  the  problem  under  review  accounts 
for  the  otherwise  disproportionate  space 
given  to  that  aspect  of  rural  life  which  is  of 
the  least  interest  to  the  general  reader. 

I  shall  now  attempt  to  determine  the  prin- 
ciples which  must  be  applied  to  the  solution 
of  our  problem.  Those  who  have  followed 
the  arguments  up  to  this  point  will  have  a 
pretty  clear  idea  of  the  general  drift  of  my 
conclusions.  The  substitution  in  rural  econ- 
omy of  the  cooperative  for  the  competitive 
principle,  which  I  have  so  far  advocated  as  a 
matter  of  business  prudence,  will  be  seen  to 
have  a  wider  import.  This  course  will  be 
shown  to  have  an  important  bearing  upon  the 
application  of  the  new  knowledge  to  the 
oldest  industry  and  also  upon  the  building  of 
a  new  rural  civilisation  .We  must  provide  for 
the  dwellers  of  the  open  country  a  larger 
share  of  the  intellectual  and  social  pleasures 
for  the  want  of  which  those  most  needed  in 
the  country  are  too  often  drawn  to  the  town. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  WAY  TO  BETTER  FARMING  AND 
BETTER  LIVING 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  WAT  TO  BETTER  FARMING  AND  BETTER 
LIVING 

IN  no  way  is  the  contrast  between  rural 
and  urban  civilisation  more  marked  than  in 
the  application  of  the  teachings  of  modern 
science  to  their  respective  industries.  Even 
the  most  important  mechanical  inventions 
were  rather  forced  upon  the  farmer  by  the 
efficient  selling  organisation  of  the  city  manu- 
facturers than  demanded  by  him  as  a  result 
of  good  instruction  in  farming.  On  the 
mammoth  wheat  farms,  where,  as  the  fable 
ran,  the  plough  that  started  out  one  morning 
returned  on  the  adjoining  furrow  the  following 
day,  mechanical  science  was  indeed  called  in, 
but  only  to  perpetrate  the  greatest  soil  rob- 
bery in  agricultural  history.  Application  of 
science  to  legitimate  agriculture  is  oompara- 
119 


120  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

tively  new.  In  my  ranching  and  farming 
days  I  well  remember  how  general  was  the 
disbelief  in  its  practical  value  throughout  the 
Middle  and  Far  West.  In  cowboy  termi- 
nology, all  scientists  were  classified  as  "  bug- 
hunters,  "  and  farmers  generally  had  no  use 
for  the  theorist.  The  non-agricultural  com- 
munity had  naturally  no  higher  appreciation 
of  the  farmer's  calling  than  he  himself  dis- 
played. When  some  Universities  first  devel- 
oped agricultural  courses,  the  students  who 
entered  for  them  were  nicknamed  "aggies," 
and  were  not  regarded  as  adding  much  to  the 
dignity  of  a  seat  of  higher  learning.  The 
Department  of  Agriculture  was  looked  upon 
as  a  source  of  jobs,  graft  being  the  nearest 
approach  to  any  known  agricultural  opera- 
tion. 

All  this  is  changing  fast.  The  Federal 
Department  of  Agriculture  is  now  perhaps 
the  most  popular  and  respected  of  the  world's 
great  administrative  institutions.  In  the 
Middle  West,  a  newly  awakened  public 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living      121 

opinion  has  set  up  an  honourable  rivalry 
between  such  States  as  Wisconsin,  Iowa, 
Illinois,  Nebraska  and  Minnesota,  in  develop- 
ing the  agricultural  sides  of  their  Universi- 
ties and  Colleges.  None  the  less,  Mr.  James 
J.  Hill  has  recently  given  it  as  his  opinion 
that  not  more  than  one  per  cent  of  the 
farmers  of  these  regions  are  working  in  direct 
touch  with  any  educational  institution.  It 
is  probable  that  this  estimate  leaves  out  of 
account  the  indirect  influence  of  the  vast 
amount  of  extension  work  and  itinerant  in- 
struction which  is  embraced  in  the  activities 
of  the  Universities  and  Colleges.  I  fear  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  in  the  application  of 
the  natural  sciences  to  the  practical,  and  of 
economic  science  to  the  business  of  farming, 
the  country  folk  are  decades  behind  their 
urban  fellow-citizens.  And  again  I  say  the 
disparity  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  difference 
in  their  respective  degrees  of  organisation 
for  business  purposes. 
The  relation  between  business  organisa- 


122  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

tion  and  economic  progress  ought,  I  submit, 
to  be  very  seriously  considered  by  the  social 
workers  who  perceive  that  progress  is  mainly 
a  question  of  education.  Speaking  from 
administrative  experience  at  home,  and  from 
a  good  deal  of  interested  observation  in 
America,  I  am  firmly  convinced  that  the  new 
rural  education  is  badly  handicapped  by  the 
lack  of  organised  bodies  of  farmers  to  act  as 
channels  for  the  new  knowledge  now  made 
available.  In  some  instances,  I  am  aware, 
great  good  has  been  done  by  the  formation  of 
farmers'  institutes  which  have  been  estab- 
lished in  order  to  interest  rural  communities 
in  educational  work  and  to  make  the  local 
arrangements  for  instruction  by  lectures, 
demonstrations  and  otherwise.  But  all  Eu- 
ropean experience  proves  the  superiority  for 
this  purpose  of  the  business  association 
to  the  organisation  ad  hoc,  and  has  a  much 
better  vchance  of  permanence. 

Again,  the  influence  upon  rural  life  of  the 
agricultural  teaching  of  the  Colleges  and  Uni- 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     123 

versities,  as  exercised  by  their  pupils,  may 
be  too  easily  accepted  as  being  of  greater 
potential  utility  than  any  work  which  these 
institutions  can  do  amongst  adults.  This 
is  a  mistake.  The  thousands  of  young  men 
who  are  now  being  trained  for  advanced  farm- 
ing too  often  have  to  restrict  the  practical 
application  of  their  theoretic  knowledge  to 
the  home  circle,  which  is  not  always  respon- 
sive, for  a  man  is  not  usually  a  prophet  in  his 
own  family.  It  is  here  that  the  educational 
value  of  cooperative  societies  comes  in; 
they  act  as  agencies  through  which  scientific 
teaching  may  become  actual  practice,  not  in 
the  uncertain  future,  but  in  the  living  present. 
A  cooperative  association  has  a  quality 
which  should  commend  it  to  the  social  re- 
former—  the  power  of  evoking  character;  it 
brings  to  the  front  a  new  type  of  local  leader, 
not  the  best  talker,  but  the  man  whose 
knowledge  enables  him  to  make  some  solid 
contribution  to  the  welfare  of  the  community. 
I  come  now  to  the  last  part  of  the  threefold 


124  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

scheme  —  that  which  aims  at  a  better  life 
upon  the  farm.  The  cooperative  associa- 
tion, in  virtue  of  its  non-capitalistic  basis  of 
constitution  and  procedure  (which,  as  I  have 
explained,  distinguishes  it  from  the  Joint 
Stock  Company),  demands  as  a  condition 
of  its  business  success  the  exercise  of  certain 
social  qualities  of  inestimable  value  to  the 
community  life.  It  is  for  this  reason,  no 
doubt,  that  where  men  and  women  have 
learned  to  work  together  under  this  system 
in  the  business  of  their  lives,  they  are  easily 
induced  to  use  their  organisation  for  social 
and  intellectual  purposes  also. 

The  new  organisation  of  the  rural  commu- 
nity for  social  as  well  as  economic  purposes, 
which  should  follow  from  the  acceptance  of  the 
opinion  I  have  advanced,  would  bring  with 
it  the  first  effective  counter-attraction  to  the 
towns.  Their  material  advantages  the  coun- 
try cannot  hope  to  rival;  nor  can  any  con- 
ceivable evolution  of  rural  life  furnish  a  real 
counterpart  to  the  cheap  and  garish  enter- 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living    125 

tainments  of  the  modern  city.  Take,  for 
example,  the  extravagant  use  of  electric  light 
for  purposes  of  advertisement,  which  affords 
a  nightly  display  of  fireworks  in  any  active 
business  street  of  an  American  city  far  su- 
perior to  the  occasional  exhibition  at  the 
Crystal  Palace  in  London,  which  was  the 
rare  treat  of  my  childhood  days.  These 
delights  —  if  such  they  be  —  cannot  be  ex- 
tended into  remote  villages  in  Kansas  or 
Nebraska;  but  their  enchantment  must  be 
reckoned  with  by  those  who  would  remould 
the  life  of  the  open  country  and  make  it 
morally  and  mentally  satisfying  to  those 
who  are  born  to  it,  or  who,  but  for  its  social 
stagnation,  would  prefer  a  rural  to  an  urban 
existence. 

In  one  of  his  many  public  references  to 
country  life,  President  Roosevelt  attributed 
the  rural  exodus  to  the  desire  of  "  the  more 
active  and  restless  young  men  and  women  " 
to  escape  from  "  loneliness  and  lack  of 
mental  companionship."  *  He  is  hopeful 

1  Message  to  the  Fifty-eighth  Congress  (1903). 


126  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

that  the  rural  free  delivery,  the  telephone, 
the  bicycle  and  the  trolley  will  do  much 
towards  "  lessening  the  isolation  of  farm  life 
and  making  it  brighter  and  more  attractive." 
Many  to  whom  I  have  spoken  on  this  sub- 
ject fear  that  the  linking  of  the  country 
with  the  town  by  these  applications  of 
modern  science  may,  to  some  extent,  operate 
in  a  direction  the  opposite  of  that  which  Mr. 
Roosevelt  anticipates  and  desires.  Accord- 
ing to  this  view,  the  more  intimate  know- 
ledge of  the  modern  city  may  increase  the 
desire  to  be  in  personal  touch  with  it ;  the 
telephone  may  fail  to  give  through  the  ear 
the  satisfaction  which  is  demanded  by  the 
eye;  among  the  "more  active  and  restless 
young  men  and  women "  the  rural  free  de- 
livery may  circulate  the  dime  novel  and  the 
trolley  make  accessible  the  dime  museum. 
In  the  total  result  the  occasional  visit  may 
become  more  and  more  frequent,  until  the 
duties  of  country  life  are  first  neglected  and 
then  abandoned. 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     127 

I  do  not  feel  competent  to  decide  between 
these  two  views,  but  I  offer  one  considera- 
tion with  which  I  think  many  rural  reformers 
will  agree.  The  attempt  to  bring  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  city  within  the  reach  of  the 
dwellers  in  the  country  cannot,  of  itself, 
counteract  the  townward  tendency  in  so  far 
as  it  is  due  to  the  causes  summarised  above. 
However  rapidly,  in  this  respect,  the  country 
may  be  improved,  the  city  is  sure  to  advance 
more  rapidly  and  the  gap  between  them  to  be 
widened.  The  new  rural  civilisation  should 
aim  at  trying  to  develop  in  the  country  the 
things  of  the  country,  the  very  existence  of 
which  seems  to  have  been  forgotten.  But, 
after  all,  it  is  the  world  within  us  rather  than 
the  world  without  us  that  matters  in  the  mak- 
ing of  society,  and  I  must  give  to  the  social 
influence  of  the  cooperative  idea  what  I 
believe  to  be  its  real  importance. 

In  Ireland,  from  which  so  much  of  my  ex- 
perience is  drawn,  we  have  found  a  tendency 
growing  among  farmers  whose  combinations 


128  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

are  successful,  to  gather  into  one  strong  local 
association  all  those  varied  objects  and  activi- 
ties which  I  have  described  as  advocated  by 
the  Irish  Agricultural  Organisation  Society. 
These  local  associations  are  ceasing  to  have 
one  special  purpose  or  one  object  only. 
They  absorb  more  and  more  of  the  business 
of  the  district.  One  large,  well-organised 
institution  is  being  substituted  for  the  nu- 
merous petty  transactions  of  farmers  with 
middlemen  and  small  country  traders. 
Gradually  the  Society  becomes  the  most 
important  institution  in  the  district,  the 
most  important  in  a  social  as  well  as  in  an 
economic  sense.  The  members  feel  a  pride  in 
its  material  expansion.  They  accumulate 
large  profits,  which  in  time  become  a  kind  of 
communal  fund.  In  some  cases  this  is  used 
for  the  erection  of  village  halls  where  social 
entertainments,  concerts  and  dances  are 
held,  lectures  delivered  and  libraries  stored. 
Finally,  the  association  assumes  the  character 
of  a  rural  commune,  where,  instead  of  the  old 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     129 

basis  of  the  commune,  the  joint  ownership  of 
land,  a  new  basis  for  union  is  found  in  the 
voluntary  communism  of  effort. 

A  true  social  organism  is  thus  being  created 
with  common  human  and  economic  interests, 
and  the  clan  feeling,  which  was  so  powerful  an 
influence  in  early  and  mediaeval  civilisations, 
with  all  its  power  of  generating  passionate 
loyalties,  is  born  anew  in  the  modern  world. 
Our  ancient  Irish  records  show  little  clans 
with  a  common  ownership  of  land  hardly 
larger  than  a  parish,  but  with  all  the  patriotic 
feeling  of  large  nations  held  with  an  inten- 
sity rare  in  our  modern  states.  The  history 
of  these  clans  and  of  very  small  nations  like 
the  ancient  Greek  states  shows  that  the  social 
feeling  assumes  its  most  binding  and  powerful 
character  where  the  community  is  large 
enough  to  allow  free  play  to  the  various  in- 
terests of  human  life,  but  is  not  so  large  that 
it  becomes  an  abstraction  to  the  imagination. 
Most  of  us  feel  no  greater  thrill  in  being  one 
of  a  State  with  fifty  million  inhabitants  than 


130  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

we  do  in  recognising  we  are  citizens  of  the 
solar  system.  The  rural  commune  and  the 
very  small  States  exhibit  the  feeling  of  human 
solidarity  in  its  most  intense  manifestations, 
working  on  itself,  regenerating  itself  and 
seeking  its  own  perfection.  Combinations 
of  agriculturists,  when  the  rural  organisation 
is  complete,  re-create  in  a  new  way  the  con- 
ditions where  these  social  instincts  germinate 
best,  and  it  is  only  by  this  complete  organisa- 
tion of  rural  life  that]  we  can  hope  to  build 
up  a  rural  civilisation,  and  create  those  coun- 
ter-attractions to  urban  life  which  will  stay 
the  exodus  from  the  land. 

I  do  not  wish  to  exaggerate  the  interest 
which  the  rural  life  of  my  own  little  island 
may  have  for  those  who  are  concerned  for 
the  vast  and  wealthy  expanses  of  the  Ameri- 
can farm  lands.  But,  even  here  there  is  a 
genuine  desire  for  the  really  simple  life, 
which  in  its  commonest  manifestation  is  a 
thing  that  rather  simple  people  talk  about. 
In  a  properly  organised  rural  neighbour- 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     131 

hood  could  be  developed  that  higher  kind  of 
attraction  which  is  suggested  by  the  very 
word  neighbourhood.  Once  get  the  farmers 
and  their  families  all  working  together  at 
something  that  concerns  them  all,  and  we 
have  the  beginning  of  a  more  stable  and  a 
more  social  community  than  is  likely  to  exist 
amid  the  constant  change  and  bustle  of  the 
large  towns,  where  indeed  some  thinkers 
tell  us  that  not  only  the  family,  but  also  the 
social  life,  is  badly  breaking  down.  When 
people  are  really  interested  in  each  other  — 
and  this  interest  comes  of  habitually  working 
together  —  the  smallest  personal  traits  or 
events  affecting  one  are  of  interest  to  all. 
The  simplest  piece  of  amateur  acting  or  sing- 
ing, done  in  the  village  hall  by  one  of  the  vil- 
lagers, will  arouse  more  criticism  and  more 
enthusiasm  among  his  friends  and  neighbours 
than  can  be  excited  by  the  most  consummate 
performance  of  a  professional  in  a  great  city 
theatre,  where  no  one  in  the  audience  knows 
or  cares  for  the  performer. 


132  The  Rural  Life  Probkm 

But  if  this  attraction  —  the  attraction  of 
common  work  and  social  intercourse  with  a 
circle  of  friends  —  is  to  prevail  in  the  long 
run  over  the  lure  which  the  city  offers  to  eye 
and  ear  and  pocket,  there  must  be  a  change 
in  rural  education.  At  present  country 
children  are  educated  as  if  for  the  purpose 
of  driving  them  into  the  towns.  To  the 
pleasure  which  the  cultured  city  man  feels 
in  the  country  —  because  he  has  been  taught 
to  feel  it  —  the  country  child  is  insensi- 
ble. The  country  offers  continual  interest 
to  the  mind  which  has  been  trained  to  be 
thoughtful  and  observant;  the  town  offers 
continual  distraction  to  the  vacant  eye  and 
brain.  Yet,  the  education  given  to  country 
children  has  been  invented  for  them  in  the 
town,  and  it  not  only  bears  no  relation  to  the 
life  they  are  to  lead,  but  actually  attracts 
them  towards  a  town  career.  I  am  aware  that 
I  am  here  on  ground  where  angels  —  even  if 
specialised  in  pedagogy  —  may  well  fear  to 
tread.  Upon  the  principles  of  a  sound  agri- 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     133 

cultural  education  pedagogues  are  in  a  nor- 
mally violent  state  of  disagreement  with  each 
other.  But  whatever  compromise  between 
general  education  and  technical  instruction  be 
adopted,  the  resulting  reform  that  is  needed 
has  two  sides.  We  want  two  changes  in  the 
rural  mind  —  beginning  with  the  rural  teach- 
er's mind.  First,  the  interest  which  the  physi- 
cal environment  of  the  farmer  provides  to  fol- 
lowers of  almost  every  branch  of  science  must 
be  communicated  to  the  agricultural  classes 
according  to  their  capacities.  Second,  that 
intimacy  with  and  affection  for  nature,  to 
which  Wordsworth  has  given  the  highest  ex- 
pression, must  in  some  way  be  engendered  in 
the  rural  mind.  In  this  way  alone  will  the 
countryman  come  to  realize  the  beauty  of 
the  life  around  him,  as  through  the  teaching 
of  science  he  will  learn  to  realise  its  truth. 

Upon  this  reformed  education,  as  a  basis, 
the  rural  economy  must  be  built.  It  must, 
if  my  view  be  accepted,  ensure,  first  and  fore- 
most, the  combination  of  farmers  for  busi- 


134  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

ness  purposes  in  such  a  manner  as  will  enable 
them  to  control  their  own  marketing  and 
make  use  of  the  many  advantages  which  a 
command  of  capital  gives.  In  all  European 
countries  —  with  the  exception  of  the  British 
Isles  —  statesmen  have  recognised  the  na- 
tional necessity  for  the  good  business  organi- 
sation of  the  farmer.  In  some  cases,  for 
example  France,  even  Government  officials 
expound  the  cooperative  principle.  In  Den- 
mark, the  most  predominantly  rural  coun- 
try in  Europe,  the  education  both  in  the 
common  and  in  the  high  school  has  long 
been  so  admirably  related  to  the  working 
lives  of  the  agricultural  classes  that  the 
people  adopt  spontaneously  the  methods  of 
organisation  which  the  commercial  instinct 
they  have  acquired  through  education  tells 
them  to  be  suitable  to  the  conditions.  The 
rural  reformer  knows  that  this  is  the  better 
way;  but  our  problem  is  not  merely  the 
education  of  a  rising,  but  the  development 
of  a  grown-up  generation.  We  cannot  wait 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     135 

for  the  slow  process  of  education  to  produce 
its  effect  upon  the  mind  of  the  rural  youth, 
even  if  there  were  any  way  of  ensuring  their 
proper  training  for  a  progressive  rural  life 
without  first  giving  to  their  parents  such 
education  as  they  can  assimilate.  Direct 
action  is  called  for;  we  have  to  work  with 
adult  farmers  and  induce  them  to  reorganise 
their  business  upon  the  lines  which  I  have 
attempted  to  define.  Moreover,  this  is  es- 
sential to  the  future  success  of  the  work  done 
in  the  schools,  in  order  that  the  trained  mind 
of  youth  may  not  afterwards  find  itself 
baulked  by  the  ignorant  apathy  or  lazy  con- 
servatism of  its  elders. 

I  hold,  then,  that  the  new  economy  will 
mean  a  more  scientific  mastery  of  the  techni- 
cal side  of  farming,  for  farmers  will  make 
a  much  larger  use  of  the  advice,  instruction 
and  help  which  the  Nation  and  the  States 
offer  them  through  the  Department  of  Agri- 
culture and  the  Colleges.  It  is  equally 
certain  that  there  will  arise  a  more  human 


136  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

social  life  in  the  rural  districts,  based  upon 
the  greater  share  of  the  products  of  the 
farmer's  industry,  which  the  new  business 
organisation  will  enable  him  to  retain; 
stimulated  by  the  closer  business  relations 
with  his  fellows  which  that  organisation  will 
bring  about,  and  fostered  by  the  closer 
neighbourhood  which  is  implied  in  a  more 
intensive  cultivation. 

The  development  of  a  more  intensive 
cultivation  must  carry  with  it  a  much  more 
careful  consideration  of  the  labour  problem. 
The  difficulty  of  getting  and  keeping  labour 
on  the  farm  is  a  commonplace.  I  think 
farmers  have  not  faced  the  fact  that  this 
difficulty  is  due  in  the  main  to  their  own 
way  of  doing  their  business.  Competent 
men  will  not  stay  at  farm  labour  unless  it 
offers  them  continuous  employment  as  part 
of  a  well-ordered  business  concern;  and  this 
is  not  possible  unless  with  a  greatly  improved 
husbandry. 

To-day  agriculture  has  to  compete  in  the 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     137 

labour  market  against  other,  and  to  many 
men  more  attractive,  industries,  and  a  marked 
elevation  in  the  whole  standard  of  life  in  the 
rural  world  is  the  best  insurance  of  a  better 
supply  of  good  farm  labour.  Only  an  in- 
tensive system  of  farming  can  afford  any 
large  amount  of  permanent  employment 
at  decent  wages  to  the  rural  labourer,  and 
only  a  good  supply  of  competent  labour  can 
render  intensive  farming  on  any  large  scale 
practicable.  But  the  intensive  system  of 
farming  not  only  gives  regular  employment 
and  good  wages;  it  also  fits  the  labourer  of 
to-day  —  in  a  country  where  a  man  can 
strike  out  for  himself  —  to  be  the  successful 
farmer  of  to-morrow.  Nor,  in  these  days 
of  impersonal  industrial  relations,  should  the 
fact  be  overlooked  that  under  an  intensive 
system  of  agriculture,  we  find  still  preserved 
the  kindly  personal  relation  between  em- 
ployer and  employed  which  contributes  both 
to  the  pleasantness  of  life  and  to  economic 
progress  and  security. 


138  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

Moreover,  in  a  country  where  advanced 
farming  is  the  rule,  there  is  a  remarkable, 
and,  from  the  standpoint  of  national  stability, 
most  valuable,  steadiness  in  employment. 
Good  farming,  by  fixing  the  labourer  on  the 
soil,  improves  the  general  condition  of  rural 
life,  by  ridding  the  countryside  of  the  worst  of 
its  present  pests.  Those  wandering  dervishes 
of  the  industrial  world,  the  hobo,  the  tramp 
—  the  entire  family  of  Weary  Willies  and 
Tired  Timothys  —  will  no  longer  have  even 
an  imaginary  excuse  for  their  troubled  and 
troublesome  existence.  But  the  farmer  who 
was  the  prey  of  these  pests  must,  if  he  would 
be  permanently  rid  of  them,  learn  to  respect 
his  hired  farm  hand.  He  must  provide  him 
with  a  comfortable  cottage  and  a  modest 
garden  plot  upon  which  his  young  family 
may  employ  themselves;  otherwise,  what- 
ever the  farmer  may  do  to  attract  labour,  he 
will  never  retain  it.  In  short,  the  labourer, 
too,  must  get  his  full  and  fair  share  of  the 
prosperity  of  the  coming  good  time  in  the 
country. 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     139 

There  is  one  particular  aspect  of  this 
improved  social  life  which  is  so  important 
that  it  ought  properly  to  form  the  subject 
of  a  separate  essay;  I  mean  the  position  of 
women  in  rural  life.  In  no  country  in  the 
world  is  the  general  position  of  woman 
better,  or  her  influence  greater,  than  in  the 
United  States.  But  while  woman  has  played 
a  great  part  there  in  the  social  life  and  econo- 
mic development  of  the  town,  I  hold  that  the 
part  she  is  destined  to  play  in  the  future 
making  of  the  country  will  be  even  greater. 

In  the  more  intelligent  scheme  of  the  new 
country  life,  the  economic  position  of  woman 
is  likely  to  be  one  of  high  importance.  She 
enters  largely  into  all  three  parts  of  our  pro- 
gramme, —  better  farming,  better  business, 
better  living.  In  the  development  of  higher 
farming,  for  instance,  she  is  better  fitted  than 
the  more  muscular  but  less  patient  animal, 
man,  to  carry  on  with  care  that  work  of 
milk  records,  egg  records,  etc.,  which  under- 
lies the  selection  on  scientific  lines  of  the  more 


140  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

productive  strains  of  cattle  and  poultry. 
And  this  kind  of  work  is  wanted  in  the  study 
not  only  of  animal,  but  also  of  plant  life. 

Again,  in  the  sphere  of  better  business,  the 
housekeeping  faculty  of  woman  is  an  im- 
portant asset,  since  a  good  system  of  farm 
accounts  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  aids 
to  successful  farming.  But  it  is,  of  course, 
in  the  third  part  of  the  programme,  —  better 
living,  —  that  woman's  greatest  opportunity 
lies.  The  woman  makes  the  home  life  of 
the  Nation.  But  she  desires  also  social  life, 
and  where  she  has  the  chance  she  develops 
it.  Here  it  is  that  the  establishment  of 
the  cooperative  society,  or  union,  gives  an 
opening  and  a  range  of  conditions  in  which 
the  social  usefulness  of  woman  makes  itself 
quickly  felt.  I  do  not  think  that  I  am  laying 
too  much  stress  on  this  matter,  because  the 
pleasures,  the  interests  and  the  duties  of 
society,  properly  so  called,  —  that  is,  the 
state  of  living  on  friendly  terms  with  our 
neighbours,  —  are  always  more  central  and 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     141 

important  in  the  life  of  a  woman  than  of  a 
man.  The  man  needs  them,  too,  for  without 
them  he  becomes  a  mere  machine  for  making 
money;  but  the  woman,  deprived  of  them, 
tends  to  become  a  mere  drudge.  The  new 
rural  social  economy  (which  implies  a  denser 
population  occupying  smaller  holdings)  must 
therefore  include  a  generous  provision  for  all 
those  forms  of  social  intercourse  which  spe- 
cially appeal  to  women.  The  Women's 
Sections  of  the  Granges  have  done  a  great 
deal  of  useful  work  in  this  direction;  we 
need  a  more  general  and  complete  applica- 
tion of  the  principles  on  which  they  act. 
I  have  now  stated  the  broad  principles 
which  must  govern  any  effective  scheme  for 
correcting  the  present  harmful  subordina- 
tion of  rural  life  to  a  civilisation  too  ex- 
clusively urban.  Before  I  bring  forward 
my  definite  proposal  for  a  remedy  calcu- 
lated to  meet  the  needs  of  the  situation,  I 
must  anticipate  a  line  of  criticism  which  may 
occur  to  the  mind  of  any  social  worker  who 


142  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

does  not  happen  to  be  very  familiar  with  the 
conditions  of  country  life. 

I  can  well  imagine  readers  who  have 
patiently  followed  my  arguments  wishing 
to  interrogate  me  in  some  such  terms  as 
these:  "Assuming,"  they  may  say,  "that 
we  accept  all  you  tell  us  about  the  neglect 
of  the  rural  population,  and  agree  as  to  the 
grave  consequences  which  must  follow  if  it 
be  continued,  what  on  earth  can  we  do? 
Of  course  the  welfare  of  the  rural  population 
is  a  matter  of  paramount  importance  to  the 
city  and  to  the  nation  at  large ;  but  may  we 
remind  you  that  you  said  the  evil  and  the 
consequences  can  be  removed  and  averted 
only  by  those  immediately  concerned  —  the 
actual  farmers  —  and  that  the  remedy  for 
the  rural  backwardness  was  to  be  sought  for 
in  the  rural  mind?  'Canst  thou  minister  to 
a  mind  diseased?'  Must  not  the  patient 
'minister7  to  himself?" 

Fair  questions  these,  and  altogether  to  the 
point.  I  answer  at  once  that  the  patient 


Better  Farming  and  Better  Living     143 

ought  to  minister  to  himself,  but  he  won't. 
He  has  acquired  the  habit  of  sending  for 
the  physician  of  the  town,  whose  physic  but 
aggravates  the  disease.  Dropping  metaphor, 
the  farmer  does  not  think  for  himself.  In 
rural  communities,  there  is  as  great  a  lack 
of  collective  thought  as  of  cooperative  action. 
All  progress  is  conditional  on  public  opinion, 
and  this,  even  in  the  country,  is  a  very  much 
town-made  thing. 

So  I  am,  then,  in  this  difficulty.  My  sub- 
ject is  rural,  my  audience  urban.  I  have  to 
commend  to  the  statesmen  and  the  phi- 
lanthropists of  the  town  the  somewhat  in- 
congruous proposal  that  they  should  take 
the  initiative  in  rural  reform.  Neither  the 
thought  nor  the  influence  which  can  set  in 
motion  what  in  agricultural  communities 
is  no  less  than  an  economic  revolution  are 
to  be  found  in  the  open  country.  To  the 
townsmen  I  now  address  my  appeal  and 
submit  a  plan. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  TWO  THINGS  NEEDFUL 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  TWO  THINGS  NEEDFUL 

IN  my  earlier  chapters  I  traced  to  the  In- 
dustrial Revolution  in  England  the  origin  of 
that  subordination,  in  the  English-speaking 
countries,  of  rural  to  urban  interests  which 
finds  its  expression  to-day  in  the  problem  of 
rural  life.  I  have  shown  that  the  continu- 
ance of  the  tendency  in  America  was  natural 
if  not  inevitable,  and  have  urged  that,  for 
economic,  social  and  political  reasons,  its 
further  progress  should  now  be  stayed.  If 
my  view  as  to  the  origin^  present  effects 
and  probable  consequences  of  the  evil  be 
accepted,  any  serious  proposals  for  a  remedy 
will  be  welcomed  by  all  who  realise  that 
national  well-being  cannot  endure  if  urban 
prosperity  is  accompanied  by  rural  decay. 
In  this  belief  I  offer  the  scheme  for  a  Country 
Life  movement  which  has  slowly  matured  in 

147 


148  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

my  own  mind  as  the  result  of  the  experience 
.described  in  the  preceding  pages. 

The  first  aim  of  the  movement  should 
be  to  coordinate,  and  guide  towards  a  com- 
mon end,  the  efforts  of  a  large  number  of 
agencies  —  educational,  religious,  social  and 
philanthropic  —  which,  in  their  several  ways, 
are  already  engaged  upon  some  part  of  the 
work  to  be  done.  For  such  a  movement  the 
United  States  offers  advantages  not  to  be 
found  elsewhere  in  the  area  for  which  we  are 
concerned.  For  here  public-spirited  individ- 
uals and  associations  of  the  kind  required 
exist  in  larger  numbers  than  can  be  known 
to  any  one  who  has  not  watched  what  is  going 
on  in  this  field  of  social  service.  If  I  had  not 
already  devoted  too  much  space  to  personal 
experiences,  I  could  of  my  own  knowledge 
testify  to  the  remarkable  growth  of  organised 
effort  in  American  rural  communities.  Some- 
times this  is  the  outcome  of  a  growing  spirit 
of  neighbourliness,  sometimes  it  emanates 
from  young  Universities  and  Colleges  emulat- 


The  Two  Things  Needful  149 

ing  the  extension  work  with  which  nearly 
every  big  city  is  familiar.  I  have  been  much 
struck  with  the  way  in  which,  at  gatherings  of 
school  teachers,  pedagogic  detail  and  ques- 
tions affecting  their  status  and  emoluments 
have  become  less  popular  subjects  for  discus- 
sion than  schemes  of  social  progress.1  Simi- 
larly, the  agricultural  Press  is  becoming  less 
exclusively  technical  and  commercial,  and 
more  human.  Even  the  syndicated  stuff  is 
getting  less  townified.  My  correspondence, 
newspaper  clippings  sent  to  me,  and  many 
other  indications,  point  in  the  same  direction. 
They  leave  the  impression  upon  my  mind  that 
there  is  a  vast,  efficient  and  enthusiastic 
army  of  social  workers  upon  the  farm  lands 
of  the  United  States  badly  hi  need  of  a  Head- 
quarters Staff. 

^n  the  capital  of  Virginia,  to  take  one  notable 
example,  I  have  witnessed  a  perfect  ferment  of  social 
activity  at  one  of  the  gatherings.  It  brought  together 
such  an  ideal  combination  of  the  best  spirits  in  both 
rural  and  urban  life  that  I  anticipate  some  striking 
developments  in  rural  civilization  which  will  surely 
extend  beyond  the  borders  of  the  State. 


150  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

If  I  am  right  in  believing  that,  of  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking countries,  the  United  States 
affords  the  best  opportunity  for  such  a 
consummation,  most  assuredly  the  present 
time  is  peculiarly  auspicious.  If  Mr.  Roose- 
velt's Country  Life  policy  has  not  been  re- 
ceived with  any  marked  enthusiasm,  Ameri- 
can public  opinion  has  been  thoroughly 
aroused  upon  his  Conservation  policy.  The 
latter  cannot  possibly  come  to  fruition  —  nor 
even  go  much  further  —  until  the  Country 
Life  problem  is  boldly  faced.  In  the  Confer- 
ence of  Governors  it  was  pointed  out  over 
and  over  again  that  the  farmer,  now  the  chief 
waster,  must  become  the  chief  conserver.  As 
such  he  will  himself  become  a  supporter  of  the 
policy,  and  will  bring  to  the  aid  of  those  ad- 
vocates of  Conservation  whose  chief  concern 
is  for  future  generations,  an  interested  public 
opinion  which  will  go  far  to  outweigh  the 
influence  of  those  who  profit  by  the  exhaus- 
tion of  natural  resources.  To  the  country 
life  reformer  I  would  say  that,  as  the  one  idea 


The  Two  Things  Needful  151 

has  caught  on  while  the  other  lags,  he  will, 
if  he  is  wise,  hitch  his  Country  Life  waggon 
to  the  Conservation  star. 

With  every  advantage  of  time  and  place, 
the  promotion  of  the  movement  which  is  to 
counteract  the  townward  tendency  will  have 
to  reckon  with  the  psychological  difficulty 
inherent  in  the  conditions.  They  must  rec- 
ognise the  paradox  of  the  situation  already 
pointed  out,  the  necessity  of  interesting  the 
town  in  the  problems  of  the  country.  The 
urban  attitude  of  mind  which  caused  the 
evil,  and  now  makes  it  difficult  to  interest 
public  opinion  in  the  remedy,  is  not  new ;  it 
pervades  the  literature  of  the  Augustan  age. 
I  recall  from  my  school  days  Virgil's  great 
handbook  on  Italian  agriculture,  written  with 
a  mastery  of  technical  detail  unsurpassed  by 
Kipling.  But  the  farmers  he  had  in  mind 
when  he  indulged  in  his  memorable  rhapsody 
upon  the  happiness  of  their  lot  were  out  for 
pleasure  rather  than  profit.  While  the  sub- 
urban poet  sang  to  the  merchant  princes, 


152  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

Rome  was  paying  a  bonus  upon  imported 
corn,  and  entering  generally  upon  that  fatal 
disregard  for  the  interest  of  the  rural  popu- 
lation which  is  one  of  the  accepted  causes  of 
the  decline  and  fall. 

How  that  Old  World  tragi-comedy  comes 
back  to  me  when  I  talk  to  New  York  friends 
on  the  subject  of  these  pages !  I  am  not,  so 
they  tell  me,  up  to  date  in  my  information; 
there  is  a  marked  revulsion  of  feeling  upon 
the  town  versus  country  question;  the  tide 
of  the  rural  exodus  has  really  turned,  as  I 
might  have  discerned  without  going  far 
afield.  At  many  a  Long  Island  home  I  might 
see  on  Sundays,  weather  permitting,  the 
horny-handed  son  of  week-day  toil  in  Wall 
Street,  rustically  attired,  inspecting  his  Jersey 
cows  and  aristocratic  fowls.  These  supply 
a  select  circle  in  New  York  with  butter  and 
eggs,  at  a  price  which  leaves  nothing  to  be 
desired  —  unless  it  be  some  information  as 
to  the  cost  of  production.  Full  justice  is 
done  to  the  new  country  life  when  the 


The  Two  Things  Needful  153 

Farmers7  Club  of  New  York  fulfils  its  chief 
function,  the  annual  dinner  at  Delmonico's. 
Then  agriculture  is  extolled  in  fine  Virgilian 
style,  the  Hudson  villa  and  the  Newport 
'  cottage '  being  permitted  to  divide  the 
honours  of  the  rural  revival  with  the  Long 
Island  home.  But  to  my  bucolic  intelli- 
gence, it  would  seem  that  against  the  'back 
to  the  land '  movement  of  Saturday  afternoon 
the  captious  critic  might  set  the  rural  exodus 
of  Monday  morning. 

These  reflections  are  introduced  in  no  un- 
friendly spirit,  and  with  serious  intent.  To 
me  this  new  rural  life  is  associated  with  mem- 
ories of  characteristically  American  hospital- 
ity; but  my  interest  in  it  is  more  than 
personal.  It  is  giving  to  those  who  cultivate 
it,  among  whom  are  the  helpers  most  needed 
at  the  moment,  a  point  of  view  which  will 
enable  them  to  grasp  the  real  problem  of  the 
open  country,  as  it  exists,  for  example,  in  the 
great  food-producing  and  cotton-growing 
tracts  of  the  West  and  South.  Both  in  the 


154  The  Rural  Life  Probkm 

countries  where  the  townward  tendency  of 
the  industrial  age  was  foreseen  and  prevented, 
and  in  those  in  which  the  evil  is  being  cured, 
the  impulse  and  inspiration  which  will  be 
required  to  initiate  and  sustain  our  Country 
Life  movement  came  mainly  from  leaders  who 
were  not  themselves  agriculturists.1  Profi- 
ciency in  the  practice  or  even  in  the  business 
of  farming  is  not  necessary.  What  is  needed 
is  a  comprehensive  knowledge  of  public 
affairs,  political  imagination,  an  understand- 
ing sympathy  with  and  a  philosophic  insight 
into  the  entire  life  of  communities.  Men  who 
combine  with  the  necessary  experience  those 
gifts  of  heart  and  mind  which  go  to  make  the 
higher  citizenship  in  the  many,  and  the  states- 
manship in  the  few,  will  more  likely  be  found 
in  the  city  than  in  the  country.  Yet  they 
are,  in  the  conditions,  the  natural  leaders  of 
the  Country  Life  movement,  which  must  now 
be  defined. 

1 1  may  mention  Raiffeisen,  Luzzati,  Rooquigny, 
Bishop  Grundtwig,  Henry  W.  Wolff,  the  Rev.  T.  A. 
Finlay,  S.J.,  and  most  of  the  leaders  in  agricultural 
organization  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 


The  Two  Things  Needful  155 

The  situation  demands  two  things;  on 
the  one  hand  an  association,  popular,  pro- 
pagandist, organising;  on  the  other,  an  In- 
stitute, scientific,  philosophic,  research-mak- 
ing. These  two  things  are  distinct  in  char- 
acter, but  they  are  complementary  to  each 
other.  One  will  require  popular  enthusiasm 
and  business  organisation.  To  the  service  of 
the  other  must  be  brought  the  patient  spirit 
of  scientific  and  philosophic  analysis  and 
inquiry.  These  two  bodies  —  the  popular 
propagandist  association  and  the  scientific 
research-making  Institute  —  must,  therefore, 
be  created ;  and,  for  a  reason  to  be  explained 
when  we  consider  the  work  of  the  Institute, 
they  should  be  independent  of  each  other. 
This  rough  indication  of  the  character  of  the 
work,  which  I  will  describe  more  in  detail 
presently,  will  suffice  for  the  moment.  I 
feel  that  the  work  will  be  so  intensely  human 
in  its  interest  that  it  will  be  well  to  say  at 
once  how  the  two  central  agencies  can  be 
established,  and  the  movement  made,  not  a 


156  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

writer's  fancy,  but  a  living  and  doing  agency 
of  human  progress. 

A  body,  in  many  respects  ideally  fitted 
to  give  the  necessary  impulse  and  direction 
to  the  work  of  organisation,  is  already  in 
the  field.  The  leaders  of  the  Conservation 
idea,  recognising  that  their  policy,  in  com- 
mon with  other  policies,  will  need  an  or- 
ganised public  opinion  at  its  back,  have 
founded  a  National  Conservation  Association. 
Mr.  Gifford  Pinchot  has  now  been  selected 
as  its  President.  Before  he  was  available, 
the  task  of  organising  and  setting  to  work 
the  new  institution  was  unanimously  en- 
trusted to  and  accepted  by  President  Eliot, 
of  whose  qualifications  all  I  will  say  is  that  we 
foreign  students  of  social  problems  vie  with 
his  own  countrymen  in  our  appreciation  of 
his  public  work  and  aims.  These  two 
appointments  are  sufficient  proof  of  the 
serious  importance  of  the  work,  and  bespeak 
public  influence  and  support  for  the  Asso- 
ciation. I  have  no  doubt  that  this  body 


The  Two  Things  Needful  157 

would  be  fully  qualified  to  formulate  and 
initiate  the  Country  Life  movement,  and  act 
as  the  central  agency  for  the  active  promo- 
tion of  its  objects.  Its  members,  who,  I  am 
sure,  agree  with  Mr.  Roosevelt  in  regarding 
the  movement  as  a  necessary  complement  to 
the  Conservation  policy,  might  even  feel  that 
for  this  very  reason  it  was  incumbent  upon 
them  to  set  their  organisation  to  this  work. 
There  is,  however,  one  consideration  which 
will  make  Mr.  Pinchot  and  his  associates 
hesitate  to  adopt  this  course.  The  doubt 
relates  to  the  distinction  I  have  drawn  be- 
tween the  Conservation  policy  and  the  Coun- 
try Life  movement,  the  one  seeking  to  pro- 
mote legislative  and  administrative  action, 
and  the  other,  while  it  may  give  birth  to 
a  policy,  being  chiefly  concerned  with  volun- 
tary effort.1  Although  the  National  Con- 
servation Association  is  founded  for  the  pur- 
pose of  educating  public  opinion  upon  the 
Conservation  idea,  it  may  decide  to  support 

1  See  above,  page  31. 


158  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

the  Conservation  policy  of  one  party  rather 
than  that  of  another.  It  would  thus  be- 
come too  much  involved  in  party  contro- 
versy to  act  as  a  central  agency  of  a  move- 
ment which  must  embrace  men  of  all  parties. 
Should  this  view  prevail,  the  difficulty  can 
be  easily  surmounted  by  following  the  Irish 
precedent,  where  we  had  a  very  similar  and 
indeed  far  more  delicate  situation  to  save 
from  political  trouble.  An  American  Agri- 
cultural Organisation  Society  could  be 
founded  for  the  purpose  in  view,  and  as  it 
is  probable  that  leading  advocates  of  the 
Conservation  policy  would  take  a  prominent 
part  in  the  Country  Life  movement,  the 
interdependence  of  the  two  ideas  would  have 
practical  recognition. 

•  Apart  from  the  possibility  of  political  com- 
plications, there  is  one  strong  reason  to  rec- 
ommend this  course.  The  movement  will  ac- 
complish its  best  and  most  permanent  results 
as  an  advocate  of  self-reliance;  it  will  seek 
to  make  self-help  effective  through  organisa- 


The  Two  Things  Needful  159 

tion;  it  will  concern  itself  much  more  for 
those  things  which  the  farmers  can  do  for 
themselves  by  cooperation  than  with  those 
things  which  the  Government  can  do  for 
them.1  The  selection,  however,  between  the 
two  alternative  courses  is  a  question  which 
the  foreign  critic  cannot  decide.  The  work  to 
which  I  now  return  will  be  the  same,  what- 
ever agency  is  charged  with  its  execution. 

1  It  may  seem  a  small  matter  even  for  a  footnote, 
but  an  unambiguous  terminology  is  so  important  to 
propagandist  work  that  I  must  mention  a  somewhat 
unfortunate  use  of  the  word  'cooperation'  which  pre- 
vails in  official  and  pedagogic  circles.  We  hear  of  co- 
operative demonstration  work,  cooperative  education, 
cooperative  lectures,  and  so  forth.  Whenever  a  Gov- 
ernment or  State  department,  or  an  educational  body 
works  with  any  other  agency,  and  sometimes  when  they 
are  only  doing  their  own  work,  they  use  the  term, 
which  is  of  course  grammatically  applicable  whenever 
two  people  work  together  —  from  matrimony  down. 
If  the  word  in  connection  with  agriculture  could  be 
retained  for  its  technical  sense,  so  long  established  and 
well  understood  in  Europe,  the  proposed  movement 
might  be  saved  a  good  deal  of  confused  thinking. 
Might  not  Government  and  educational  authorities 
substitute  the  word  'coordinated'  so  as  to  preserve  the 
distinction? 


160  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

The  central  body  (which  for  brevity  I  will 
call  the  Association)  will  have  as  its  general 
aim  the  economic  and  social  development 
of  rural  communities.  The  work  will  be 
mainly  that  of  active  organisation.  For 
reasons  explained  in  the  earlier  chapters, 
the  organisation  must  be  cooperative  in 
character,  and  will  be  concentrated  upon  the 
business  methods  of  the  farmers.  This  will, 
it  is  believed,  cure  a  radical  defect  in  their 
system  —  a  defect  which,  as  I  have  argued, 
is  responsible  for  a  restricted  production, 
and  for  a  course  of  distribution  injurious 
alike  to  producer  and  consumer,  besides  ex- 
ercising a  depressing  influence  upon  the 
economic  efficiency  and  social  life  of  rural 
communities.  It  follows  that  the  first  step 
towards  a  general  reconstruction  of  country 
life,  which  has  the  promise  of  giving  to  the 
country  a  social  attraction  strong  enough  to 
stem  the  tide  of  the  townward  migration, 
is  agricultural  cooperation. 

Such  being  the  general  aim  and  the  defi- 


The  Two  Things  Needful  161 

nite  procedure,  the  first  practical  question 
that  arises  will  be,  how  to  apply  this  solvent 
—  agricultural  cooperation.  It  will  not  suf- 
fice to  throw  these  two  long  words  at  the 
hardy  rustic;  shorter  and  more  emphatic 
words  might  come  back.  Two  equally  neces- 
sary things  must  be  done ;  the  principle  must 
be  made  clear,  and  the  practical  details  of 
this  rural  equivalent  of  urban  business  com- 
bination must  be  explained  in  language 
understanded  of  the  people.  It  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  draft  a  paper  scheme  for  this  purpose, 
but  the  fitting  of  the  plan  to  local  conditions 
is  a  very  expert  business.  Hence  the  central 
agency  should  have  at  its  disposal  a  corps 
of  experts  in  cooperative  organisation  for 
agricultural  purposes.  After  a  short  visit 
to  a  likely  district  by  a  competent  exponent 
of  the  theory  and  practice,  local  volunteers 
would  be  found  to  carry  on  the  work.  Ex- 
perience shows  that  once  a  well-organised 
cooperative  association  of  farmers  is  per- 
manently established,  similar  associations 


162  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

spring  up  spontaneously  under  the  magic 
influence  of  proved  success  in  known  condi- 
tions. I  should  strongly  recommend  con- 
centration at  first  on  a  few  selected  districts, 
with  the  aim  of  making  standard  models 
to  which  other  communities  could  work. 
I  need  hardly  say  that  all  this  work  would 
be  done  in  cooperation  with  whatever  other 
agencies  would  lend  their  aid.  The  Country 
Life  movement  would  be  extremely  useful 
to  the  great  educational  foundations  centred 
in  New  York.  I  happen  to  know  that  the 
Trustees  of  the  Rockefeller,  Carnegie  and 
Russell  Sage  endowments  are  keenly  desirous 
to  promote  such  a  redirection  of  rural  edu- 
cation as  will  bring  it  into  a  more  helpful 
relation  with  the  working  lives  of  the  rural 
population.  Then  there  are  such  bodies  as 
the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  whose  leaders,  I  am  told, 
are  alive  to  the  value  of  the  open  air  life, 
and  are  anxious  to  extend  their  country  work 
in  the  rural  districts.  The  great  army  of 
rural  teachers,  the  Farmers'  Union,  and  other 


The  Two  Things  Needful  103 

farmers'  organisations  I  have  already  named 
would  gladly  cooperate  with  schemes  making 
for  rural  progress. 

More  important,  I  believe,  than  is  generally 
realised,  from  an  economic  and  social  point 
of  view,  are  the  rural  churches.  In  many 
European  countries,  where  agricultural  co- 
operation has  played  a  great  part  in  the 
people's  lives,  the  clergy  have  ardently  sup- 
ported the  system  on  account  of  its  moral 
value.  In  Ireland,  some  of  our  very  best 
volunteer  organisers  are  clergymen.  Some 
leaders  of  the  rural  church  in  the  United 
States  have  told  me  that  a  feeling  is  growing 
that  an  increased  economic  usefulness  in 
the  clergy  would  strengthen  their  position 
in  the  society  which  they  serve  in  a  higher 
capacity.  I  know  that  the  suggestion  of 
clerical  intervention  in  secular  affairs  is  open 
to  misunderstanding.  But  here  is  a  body 
of  educated  citizens  who  would  gladly  take 
part  in  any  real  social  service;  and  here  is 
a  situation  where  there  is  work  of  high  moral 


164  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

and  social  value  calling  for  volunteers. 
Nothing  but  good,  it  seems  to  me,  could  result 
if  such  men,  who  have  more  opportunity  and 
inclination  for  general  reading  than  the 
working  farmer,  would  help  in  explaining 
the  intricacies  of  cooperative  organisation 
and  procedure  which  must  be  understood 
and  practised  in  order  that  the  system  may 
be  fruitful. 

In  addition  to  its  active  propagandist 
work,  the  central  Association  could  exercise 
a  powerful  and  helpful  influence  in  other 
ways.  It  should,  of  course,  keep  both  the 
agricultural  and  the  general  press  informed 
of  its  plans  and  progress.  It  should  also 
keep  in  touch  with  the  agricultural  work  of 
all  important  educational  bodies,  and  more 
especially  urge  upon  them  the  necessity  of 
spreading  the  cooperative  idea.  The  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  would  welcome  and 
support  the  movement;  for  I  know  many 
leading  men  in  that  service  who  thoroughly 
understand  and  recognise  the  immense  im- 


The  Two  Things  Needful  165 

portance,  especially  to  backward  rural  com- 
munities, of  the  cooperative  principle. 

It  is  not  necessary,  at  this  stage,  to  go 
further  into  details.  I  feel  confident  that 
the  work  of  assisting  all  suitable  agencies, 
such  as  those  I  have  named,  and  others  which 
may  be  available,  through  organisers  of  agri- 
cultural cooperation  and  by  the  spreading 
of  information,  would  soon  enable  the  central 
body  to  render  inestimable  service  to  the 
cause  of  rural  progress.  Such,  at  any  rate, 
is  the  outline  of  my  first  proposal  for  giving 
to  my  American  fellow-workers  upon  the 
rural  problem  the  assistance  which  I  feel 
they  most  need  at  the  present  moment.  I 
pass  now  to  my  second  proposal. 

I  suggest  that  an  institution  —  which,  as 
I  have  said,  will  be  scientific,  philosophic, 
research-making  —  should  be  founded.  It 
would  be,  in  effect,  a  Bureau  of  research  in 
rural  social  economy.  Personally  I  know 
that,  in  my  own  experience  as  an  adminis- 
trator and  organiser,  I  have  been  constantly 


166  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

brought  face  to  face  with  problems  where 
we  could  turn  to  no  guide  —  no  patient  band 
of  investigators  who  had  been  measuring,  an- 
alysing, determining  the  data.  Yet  in  some 
directions  much  excellent  work  is  being  done. 
Every  social  worker  knows  how  the  know- 
ledge of  what  others  are  doing  will  help  him. 
It  is  strange  how  little  the  problems  of  the 
rural  population  have  entered  into  the 
studies  of  economists  and  sociologists.  At 
leading  Universities  I  have  sought  in  vain 
for  light.  At  a  recent  anniversary  in  New 
York,  which  brought  together  the  foremost 
economists  of  the  Old  and  New  World,  there 
was  an  almost  complete  omission  of  the 
country  side  of  things  from  a  programme 
which  I  am  sure  was  generally  held  to  be  al- 
most exhaustive.  The  fact  is,  the  subject 
must  be  treated  as  a  new  one,  and  it  is  ur- 
gently necessary,  if  the  work  of  the  Country 
Life  movement  is  to  be  based  on  a  solid  foun- 
dation of  fact,  to  make  good  the  deficiency 
of  information  which  has  resulted  from  the 


The  Two  Things  Needful  167 

general  lack  of  interest  in  the  subject  under 
review.  An  Institute  is  wanted  to  survey 
the  field,  to  collect,  classify  and  coordinate 
information  and  to  supplement  and  carry 
forward  the  work  of  research  and  inquiry. 
The  rural  social  worker  requires  as  far  as 
possible  to  carry  exact  statistical  method 
into  his  work  so  that  he  may  no  longer  have 
to  depend  on  general  statements,  but  may 
have  at  his  command  evidence,  the  validity 
of  which  can  be  trusted,  while  its  significance 
can  be  measured.  I  may  mention  a  few 
typical  questions  on  which  useful  light  would 
be  shed  by  the  Institute's  researches :  — 

1.  The  influence   of   cooperative   methods 
(a)   on  the  productive   and  distributive 
efficiency  of  rural  communities,  and  (6) 
on  the  development  of  a  social  country 
life. 

2.  The  systems  of  rural  education,  both 
general  and  technical,  in  different  countries, 
and  the  administrative  and  financial  basis 
of  each  system. 


168  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

3.  The  relation  between  agricultural  econ- 
omy and  the  cost  of  food. 

4.  The  changes   (a)   in  the   standard  and 
cost  of  living,  and  (6)  in  the  economy,  sol- 
vency and  stability  of  rural  communities. 

5.  The  economic  interdependence  of  the  agri- 
cultural producer  and  the  urban  consumer, 
and  the  extent  and  incidence  of  middle 
profits  in  the  distribution  of  agricultural 
produce. 

6.  The  action  taken  by  different  Govern- 
ments to  assist  the  development  and  se- 
cure the  stability  of  the  agricultural  classes, 
and  the  possibilities  and  the  dangers  of 
such  action,  with  special  reference  to  the 
delimitation  of  the  respective  spheres  of 
State  aid  and  voluntary  effort. 

7.  How  far  agricultural  and  rural  employ- 
ment can  relieve  the  problems  of  city  un- 
employment, and  assist  the  work  of  social 
reclamation. 

Some  may  think  that  I  am  assigning  to 
two  bodies  work  which  could  be  as  well  done 


The  Two  Things  Needful  169 

by  one.  While  all  proposals  for  multiplying 
organisations  in  the  field  of  social  service 
should  be  critically  examined,  there  are 
strong  reasons  in  this  case  for  the  course  I 
suggest.  The  two  bodies,  while  working  to 
a  common  end,  will  differ  essentially  in  their 
scope  and  method.  The  propagandist  agency 
will  be  executive  and  administrative,  and 
while  its  operations  would  have  suggestive 
value  to  the  country  social  worker  every- 
where, it  would  be  concerned  directly  only 
with  the  United  States.  Furthermore,  it 
need  not  necessarily  have  any  lengthened 
existence  as  a  national  propagandist  agency. 
It  would  be  founded  mainly  to  introduce  that 
method  into  American  agricultural  economy 
which  I  have  tried  to  show  lies  at  the  root 
of  rural  progress.  As  soon  as  the  soundness 
of  the  general  scheme  had  been  demon- 
strated in  any  State,  the  central  body  would 
promote  an  organisation  to  take  over  the 
work  within  that  State.  The  State  organ- 
isation would,  in  its  turn,  soon  be  able  to 


170  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

devolve  its  propagandist  work  upon  a  fed- 
eration of  the  business  associations  which  it 
had  been  the  means  of  establishing.  That 
is  the  contemplated  evolution  of  my  first 
proposal  —  the  early  delegation  of  the  func- 
tions of  the  national  to  the  State  propagan- 
dist agency,  which  would  further  devolve 
the  work  upon  bodies  of  farmers  organ- 
ised primarily  for  economic  purposes,  but 
with  the  ulterior  aim  of  social  advance- 
ment. 

The  Country  Life  Institute  would  be  on  a 
wholly  different  footing.  Its  researches,  if 
only  to  subserve  the  Country  Life  movement 
in  the  United  States,  would  have  to  range 
over  the  civilised  world,  and  to  be  historical 
as  well  as  contemporary.  It  should  be  re- 
garded as  a  contribution  to  the  welfare  of 
the  English-speaking  peoples,  one  aspect  of 
whose  civilisation  —  if  there  be  truth  in 
what  I  have  written  —  needs  to  be  recon- 
sidered in  the  light  which  the  Institute  is 
designed  to  afford.  Its  task  will  be  of  no 


The  Two  Things  Needful  171 

ephemeral  character.  Its  success  will  not, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  active  propagandist 
body,  lessen  the  need  for  its  services,  but  will 
rather  stimulate  the  demand  for  them. 

These  differences  will  have  to  be  taken  into 
account  in  considering  the  important  ques- 
tion of  ways  and  means.  Both  bodies  will, 
I  hope,  appeal  successfully  to  public-spirited 
philanthropists.  The  temporary  body  will 
need  only  temporary  support;  perhaps  pro- 
vision for  a  five-years'  campaign  would 
suffice.  In  the  near  future,  local  organisa- 
tions would  naturally  defray  the  cost  of 
the  services  rendered  to  them  by  the  cen- 
tral body;  but  the  Country  Life  Institute 
would  need  a  permanent  endowment.  The 
man  fitted  for  its  chief  control  will  not  be 
found  idle,  but  will  have  to  be  taken  from 
other  work.  The  scheme,  as  I  have  worked 
it  out,  will  involve  prolonged  economic  and 
social  inquiry  over  a  wide  field.  This  would 
be  conducted  mostly  by  postgraduate  stu- 
dents. From  those  who  did  this  outside 


172  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

work  with  credit  would  be  recruited  the  small 
staff  which  would  be  needed  at  the  central 
office  to  get  into  the  most  accessible  form 
the  facts  and  opinions  which  are  needed  for 
the  guidance  of  those  who  are  doing  practical 
work  in  the  field  of  rural  regeneration.  My 
estimate  of  the  amount  required  to  do  the 
work  well  is  from  forty  to  fifty  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year,  or  say  a  capital  sum  of  from  a 
million  to  a  million  and  a  quarter  dollars. 
Whether  the  project  is  worthy  of  such  an 
expenditure,  depends  upon  the  question 
whether  I  have  made  good  my  case. 

Let  me  summarise  this  case.  I  have  tried 
to  show  that  modern  civilisation  is  one-sided 
to  a  dangerous  degree  —  that  it  has  concen- 
trated itself  in  the  towns  and  left  the  country 
derelict.  This  tendency  is  peculiar  to  the 
English-speaking  communities,  where  the 
great  industrial  movement  has  had  as  its  con- 
sequence the  rural  problem  I  have  examined. 
If  the  townward  tendency  cannot  be  checked, 
it  will  ultimately  bring  about  the  decay  of 


The  Two  Things  Needful  173 

the  towns  themselves,  and  of  our  whole  civil- 
isation, for  the  towns  draw  their  supply  of 
population  from  the  country.  Moreover,  the 
waste  of  natural  resources,  and  possibly  the 
alarming  increase  in  the  price  of  food,  which 
have  lately  attracted  so  much  attention  in 
America,  are  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  those 
who  cultivate  the  land  do  not  intend  to  spend 
their  lives  upon  it ;  and  without  a  rehabilita- 
tion of  country  life  there  can  be  no  success 
for  the  Conservation  policy.  Therefore,  the 
Country  Life  movement  deals  with  what  is 
probably  the  most  important  problem  before 
the  English-speaking  peoples  at  this  time. 
Now  the  predominance  of  the  towns  which  is 
depressing  the  country  is  based  partly  on  a 
fuller  application  of  modern  physical  science, 
partly  on  superior  business  organisation, 
partly  on  facilities  for  occupation  and  amuse- 
ment ;  and  if  the  balance  is  to  be  redressed, 
the  country  must  be  improved  in  all  three 
ways.  There  must  be  better  farming,  better 
business,  and  better  living.  These  three  are 


174  The  Rural  Life  Problem 

equally  necessary,  but  better  business  must 
come  first.  For  farmers,  the  way  to  better 
living  is  cooperation,  and  what  cooperation 
means  is  the  chief  thing  the  American  farmer 
has  to  learn. 


'  I  ^HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a 
few  of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects 


The  American  Rural  School 

BY 
HAROLD  WALDSTEIN  FOGHT,  A.M. 

Professor  of  Education,  Midland  College 

Its  Characteristics,  its  Future,  and  its  Problems 


Cloth  I2mo 


Probably  no  one  has  probed  the  needs  of  the  rural  school  and  the  dif- 
ficulties which  beset  its  teachers  as  has  Harold  Waldstein  Foght  in  his 
"American  Rural  School."  The  author  presents  a  practical  and  ex- 
haustive account  of  existing  conditions  in  our  rural  schools  and  the 
remedies  therefor;  and,  while  primarily  addressed  to  the  teachers, 
superintendents,  general  officers,  and  the  taxpayers  of  such  schools,  the 
book  is  so  clear  and  convincing  that  it  may  well  find  readers  among 
thinking  people  everywhere.  The  deplorably  low  standards,  both  as  to 
mental  instruction  and  moral  and  sanitary  conditions,  are  dwelt  upon 
at  length.  The  poor  quality  of  professional  ability,  which  is  the  direct 
result  of  the  niggardly  salaries  paid  to  the  average  teacher,  is  shown  in 
striking  contrast  to  the  standards  of  salaries  of  European  teachers. 
There  are  interesting  chapters  on  the  advantages  of  nature  study,  land- 
scape gardening,  etc.,  as  the  surest  means  of  interesting  the  country 
boy  and  girl  in  their  environment  and  thereby  making  them  content  to 
cultivate  the  ground  or  find  their  life-work  on  their  native  heath,  thus 
diverting  the  stream  from  the  already  overcrowded  cities.  Professor 
Foght  has  carefully  studied  the  conditions  prevailing  in  the  elementary 
and  secondary  rural  schools,  not  only  in  the  United  States,  but  in  Eu- 
ropean countries,  and  has  arranged  his  mass  of  material  in  a  thoroughly 
comprehensive  and  suggestive  manner. 


PUBLISHED    BY 

THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  Tork 


BOOKS   ON   AGRICULTURE 

ON  SELECTION  OF  LAND,  Etc. 

Thomas  F.  Hunt's  How  to  Choose  a  Farm      .        .  $i  75  net 

E.  W.  Hilgard's  Soils :   Their  Formation  and  Relations 

to  Climate  and  Plant  Growth 400  net 

Isaac  P.  Roberts's  The  Farmstead I  50  net 

ON  TILLAGE,    Etc. 

F.  H.  King's  The  Soil I  50  net 

Isaac  P.  Roberts's  The  Fertility  of  the  Land   .        .        .  I  50  net 

Elwood  Mead's  Irrigation  Institutions     .        .        .         .  I  25  net 

F.  H.  King's  Irrigation  and  Drainage     .        .        .        .  I  50  net 
William  E.  Smythe's  The  Conquest  of  Arid  America       .  I  50  net 

Edward  B.  Voorhees's  Fertilizers I  25  net 

Edward  B.  Voorhees's  Forage  Crops        .        .        .         .  1 50  net 

H.  Snyder's  Chemistry  of  Plant  and  Animal  Life     .        .  I  25  net 

H.  Snyder's  Soil  and  Fertilizers.     Third  edition      .        .  I  25  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Principles  of  Agriculture  .         .        .        .  I  25  net 
W.  C.  Welborn's  Elements  of  Agriculture,  Southern  and 

Western 75  net 

J.  F.  Duggar's  Agriculture  for  Southern  Schools     .        .  75  net 

G.  F.  Warren's  Elements  of  Agriculture  .        .        .         .  I  10  net 
T.  L.  Lyon  and  E.  O.  Fippin's  The  Principles  of  Soil 

Management I  75  net 

Hilgard  &  Osterhout's  Agriculture  for  Schools  on  the 

Pacific  Slope I  oo  net 

J.  A.  Widtsoe's  Dry  Farming I  50  net 

ON  GARDEN-MAKING 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Manual  of  Gardening        .        .        .        .  2  oo  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Vegetable-Gardening        .         .        .        .  I  50  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Horticulturist's  Rule  Book        ...  75  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Forcing  Book I  25  net 

A.  French's  How  to  Grow  Vegetables     .        .        .        .  I  75  net 

ON  FRUIT-GROWING,   Etc. 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Nursery  Book    .        .        .        .        •        .  1 50  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Fruit-Growing I  50  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  The  Pruning  Book I  50  net 

F.  W.  Card's  Bush  Fruits I  50  net 

J.  T.  Bealby's  Fruit  Ranching  in  British  Columbia          .  I  50  net 

ON  THE  CARE  OF  LIVE  STOCK 

D.  E.  Lyon's  How  to  Keep  Bees  for  Profit     .        .        .  I  50  net 

Nelson  S.  Mayo's  The  Diseases  of  Animals     .        .        .  I  50  net 

W.  H.  Jordan's  The  Feeding  of  Animals         .        .        .  I  50  net 

I.  P.  Roberts's  The  Horse I  25  net 

George  C.  Watson's  Farm  Poultry I  25  net 

C.  S.  Valentine's  How  to  Keep  Hens  for  Profit       .        .  I  50  net 
O.  Kellner's  The  Scientific  Feeding  of  Animals  (trans.)  I  90  net 
M.  H.  Rcynolds's  Veterinary  Studies  for  Agricultural  Stu- 
dents    i  75  net 


BOOKS   ON    AGRICULTURE  —  Continued 


ON   DAIRY   WORK 

Henry  H.  Wing's  Milk  and  its  Products          .        .        .  jfi  50  net 

C.  M.  Aikman's  Milk I  25  net 

Harry  Snyder's  Dairy  Chemistry I  oo  net 

W.  D.  Frost's  Laboratory  Guide  in  Elementary  Bacteri- 
ology      i  60  net 

I.  P.  Sheldon's  The  Farm  and  the  Dairy         .         .        .  I  oo  net 
Chr.  Barthel's  Methods  Used  in  the  Examination  of  Milk 

and  Dairy  Products I  90  net 

ON   PLANT  DISEASES,  Etc. 

George  Massee's  Diseases  of  Cultivated  Plants  and  Trees  2  25  net 

J.  G.  Lipman's  Bacteria  in  Relation  to  Country  Life        .  I  50  net 

E.  C.  Lodeman's  The  Spraying  of  Plants          .         .         .  I  25  net 

H.  M.  Ward's  Disease  in  Plants  (English)       .         .         .  I  60  net 

A.  S.  Packard's  A  Text-book  on  Entomology  .         .         .  4  50  net 

ON   PRODUCTION   OF   NEW   PLANTS 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Plant* Breeding I  25  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  The  Survival  of  the  Unlike        .         .         .  2  oo  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  The  Evolution  of  Our  Native  Fruits          .  2  oo  net 

W.  S.  Harwood's  New  Creations  in  Plant  Life         .        .  I  75  net 

ON   ECONOMICS   AND   ORGANIZATION 

J.  B.  Green's  Law  for  the  American  Farmer     ...  50  net 

J.  McLennan's  Manual  of  Practical  Farming   .         .  50  net 

L.  H.  Bailey's  The  State  and  the  Farmer         .         .  25  net 

Henry  C.  Taylor's  Agricultural  Economics       .         .  25  net 

I.  P.  Roberts's  The  Farmer's  Business  Handbook     .  25  net 

George  T.  Fairchild's  Rural  Wealth  and  Welfare     .  25  net 

S.  E.  Sparling's  Business  Organization     ...  25  net 

In  the  Citizen's  Library.     Includes  a  chapter  on  Farm 

ing 

Kate  V.  St.  Maur's  A  Self-supporting  Home   .        .  75  net 

Kate  V.  St.  Maur's  The  Earth's  Bounty  ...  75  net 
G.  F.  Warren  and  K.  C.  Livermore's  Exercises  in  Farm 

Management 80  net 

H.  N.  Ogden's  Rural  Hygiene I  50  net 

ON   EVERYTHING  AGRICULTURAL 

L.  H.  Bailey's  Cyclopedia  of  American  Agriculture : 
Vol.  I.   Farms,  Climates,  and  Soils. 
Vol.  II.   Farm  Crops. 
Vol.  III.    Farm  Animals. 
Vol.  IV.   The  Farm  and  the  Community. 

Complete  in  four  royal  8vo  volumes,  with  over  2000  illustrations. 
Price  of  sets :  cloth,  $20  net ;  half  morocco,  $32  net. 

For  further  information  as  to  any  of  the  above,  address  the  publishers. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


OF  INTEREST  TO  ANY  GARDENER 


A  Woman's  Hardy  Garden 

BY  HELENA  R.   ELY  Illustrated    Cloth    I2mo    $1.75  net 

"  Mrs.  Ely  give?  copious  details  of  the  cost  of  plants,  the  exact  dates  ol 
planting,  the  number  of  plants  required  in  a  given  space  for  beauty  of  effect 
and  advantage  to  free  growth,  the  protection  needed  from  sun  and  frost, 
the  precautions  to  take  against  injury  from  insects,  the  satisfaction  to  be 
expected  from  different  varieties  of  plants  in  the  matter  of  luxuriant  bloom 
and  length  of  time  for  blossoming,  and  much  information  to  be  appreciated 
only  by  those  who  have  raised  a  healthy  garden  by  the  slow  teachings  of 
personal  experience."  —  New  York  Times. 

Another  Hardy  Garden  Book 

By  HELENA   R.    ELY  Illustrated    Cloth     I2mo     $1.75  net 

"  The  great  value  of  '  Another  Hardy  Garden  Book '  lies  in  the  fact  that  it 
deals  with  the  conditions  of  soil  and  climate  to  be  found  in  this  part  of  the 
country,  it  narrates  actual  experiences  in  a  garden  not  so  far  beyond  the 
average  city  dweller  as  to  discourage  him,  and  it  gives  just  the  advice  and 
information  needed  by  the  amateur  gardener  of  moderate  means  and  lim- 
ited responsibilities."  —  Philadelphia  Ledger. 

A  Self-Supporting  Home 

BY  KATE  V.  SAINT  MAUR 

Illustrated    Cloth    I2mo    $1.75  net 

"An  interesting  narrative  and  a  very  handy  and  practical  guide  to  life  in 
the  country  on  the  basis  of  a  small  income.  The  common-sense  practi- 
cality which  gives  the  book  its  value,  is  attributable  to  the  fact  that  these  ar» 
actual  experiences  described  here."  —  The  Richmond  Times-Despatch* 

The  Earth's  Bounty 

BY  KATE  V.  SAINT  MAUR 

Illustrated    Cloth    I2mo    $1.75  net 

"  After  reading  Mrs.  Saint  Maur's  clever  book  one  feels  a  longing  for  the 
healthful  simplicity  of  the  country  life  and  the  rewards  that  it  holds  out  to 
human  thrift  and  industry.  The  book  is  full  of  practical,  accurate  business 
information  which  should  make  it  invaluable  to  any  one  anxious  to  try 
farming  for  profit."  —  Philadelphia  Ledger. 

A  Book  of  Vegetables  and  Garden  Herbs 

BY  ALLEN  FRENCH  Illustrated    Cloth    I2mo    $1.75  net 


PUBLISHED   BY 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  Tork 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNT 


AN 

§§1^°.^"- 

OVERDUE. 


• 


IN  STACKa 

JAN  l^  1984 
REC'D 


341993 


HT+ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


